IBRARY THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA PRESENTED BY NORMAN FOERSTER < CIA. ***- Jisc£^jz~>^ CIBRARY She Xonbon Xibrar^ d "T THE LIFE OF GOETHE Xonfcon Autobiography of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Edited by SIDNEY LEE. Letters of Literary Men: Sir Thomas More to Eobert Burns. Arranged and Edited by F. A. MUMBY. Letters of Literary Men : Nineteenth Century. Arranged and Edited by F. A. MUMBY. Life of Goethe. By G. H. LEWES. Life of Shelley. By T. J. HOGG. With an Introduction by EDWARD DOWDEN. Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson. By his widow, LUCY HUTCHINSON. Edited by C. H. FIRTH. Memoirs of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, and Margaret his Wife. Edited by C. H. FIRTH. The Interpretation of Scripture, and other Essays. . By BENJAMIN JOWETT. With the essay on 'Jowett's Life ' by SIR LESLIE STEPHEN. GOETHE. THE LIFE OF GOETHE By GEORGE HENRY LEWES LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS LIMITED NEW YORK: E. P. BUTTON &'CO. 1773 ITU" \-7fL-S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION (PARTLY REWRITTEN) 1864 r I AHERE was, perhaps, some temerity in attempting a Life •A. of Goethe at a time when no German author had under- taken the task ; but the reception which my work has met with, even after the appearance of the biographies by Viehoff and Schafer, is a justification of the temerity. The sale of thirteen thousand copies in England and Germany, and the sympathy generously expressed, not unmingled, it is true, with adverse and even angry criticism, are assurances that my labours were not wholly misdirected, however far they may have fallen short of their aim. For the expressions of sym- pathy, public and private, I cannot but be grateful ; and I have done my best to profit by criticism even when it was most hostile. I wish to make special mention of the assistance tendered me by the late Mr. Franz Demmler. Although a stranger to me, this accomplished student of Goethe kindly volunteered, amid many and pressing avocations, to re-read my book with the express purpose of annotating it ; and he sent me several sheets of notes and objections, all displaying the vigour of his mind and the variety of his reading. Some of these I was glad to use; and even those which I could not agree with or adopt, were always carefully considered. On certain points our opinions were diametrically opposed; but it was always an advantage to me to read criticisms so frank and acute. vi Preface The present edition is altered in form and in substance. It has been rewritten in parts, with a view not only of intro- ducing all the new material which several important publica- tions have furnished, but also of correcting and reconstructing it so as to make it more worthy of public favour. As there is little probability of any subsequent publication bringing to light fresh material of importance, I hope that this recon- struction of my book will be final. With respect to the use I have made of the materials at hand, especially of Goethe's Autobiography, I can but repeat what was said in the Preface to the First Edition : the Dich- tung imd Wahrheit not only wants the egotistic garrulity and detail which give such confessions their value, but presents great difficulties to a biographer. The main reason of this is the abiding inaccuracy of tone, which, far more misleading than the many inaccuracies of fact, gives to the whole youth- ful period, as narrated by him, an aspect so directly contrary to what is given by contemporary evidence, especially his own letters, that an attempt to reconcile the contradiction is futile. If any one doubts this, and persists in his doubts after reading the first volume of this work, let him take up Goethe's Letters to the Countess von Stolberg, or the recently published letters to Kes-tner and Charlotte, and compare their tone with the tone of the Autobiography p, wherein the old man depicts the youth as the old man saw him, not as the youth felt and lived. The picture of youthful follies and youthful passions comes softened through the distant avenues of years. The turbulence of a youth of genius is not indeed quite forgotten, but it is hinted with stately reserve. Jupiter serenely throned upon Olympus forgets that he was once a rebel with the Titans. When we come to know the real facts, we see that the Preface vii Autobiography does not so much misstate as understate ; we, who can ' read between the lines ', perceive that it errs more from want of sharpness of relief and precision of detail than from positive misrepresentation. Controlled by contemporary evidence, it furnishes one great source for the story of the early years; and I greatly regret there is not more contem- porary evidence to furnish more details. For the later period, besides the mass of printed testimony in shape of Letters, Memoirs, Reminiscences, etc., I have endeavoured to get at the truth by consulting those who lived under the same roof with him, those who lived in friendly intercourse with him, and those who have made his life and works a special study. I have sought to acquire and to reproduce a definite image of the living man, and not simply of the man as he appeared in all the reticences of print. For this purpose I have controlled and completed the testimonies of print by means of papers which have never seen the light, and papers which in all probability never will see the light — by means of personal corroboration, and the many slight details which are gathered from far and wide when one is alive to every scrap of authentic information and can see its significance; and thus comparing testimony with testimony, completing what was learned yesterday by some- thing learned to-day, not unfrequently helped to one passage by details furnished from half a dozen quarters, I have formed the conclusions which appear in this work. In this difficult, and sometimes delicate task, I hope it will be apparent that I have been guided by the desire to get at the truth, having no cause to serve, no partisanship to mislead me, no personal connexion to trammel my judgment. It will be seen that I neither deny, nor attempt to slur over, points which may tell against my hero. The man is too great and viii Preface too good to forfeit our love, because on some points he may incur blame. Considerable space has been allotted to analyses and criti- cisms of Goethe's works; just as in the life of a great Captain, much space is necessarily occupied by his campaigns. By these analyses I have tried to be of service to the student of German literature, as well as to those who do not read German ; and throughout it will be seen that pains have not been spared to make the reader feel at home in this foreign land. The scientific writings have been treated with what pro- portionately may seem great length ; and this, partly because science filled a large portion of Goethe's life ; partly, because, even in Germany, there was nothing like a full exposition of his aims and achievements in this direction. CONTENTS BOOK I: 1749 TO 1765 CHAPTER I PARENTAGE .... CHAPTER II I HE PRECOCIOUS (JHILD . 9 EARLY EXPERIENCES . CHAPTER III . 18 VARIOUS STUDIES CHAPTER IV . 26 CHAPTER V THE CHILD is FATHER TO THE MAN . . . • 32 BOOK II: 1765 TO 1771 THE LEIPSIC STUDENT CHAPTER I . . 36 CHAPTER II MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS . . . . 50 ART STUDIES. . CHAPTER III . 54 RETURN HOME . CHAPTER IV . . 58 STRASBURG . . CHAPTER V . . 64 HERDER AND FREDERIKA CHAPTER VI . . 78 Contents BOOK III: 1771 TO 1775 CHAPTER I DR. GOETHE'S RETURN . . ... 97 CHAPTER II 'GOTZ VON BERLICHINGEN' . . ... 105 CHAPTER III WETZLAR . . . . ... 113 CHAPTER IV PREPARATIONS FOR 'WERTHER' . ... 127 CHAPTER V 'WERTHER' . . . . . . . 146 CHAPTER VI THE LITERARY LION . . . . . . 161 CHAPTER VII LILI . . . . ... 181 BOOK IV: 1775 TO 1779 CHAPTER I WEIMAR IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY . . 191 . 204 CHAPTER III THE FIRST WILD WEEKS AT WEIMAR . . . 212 CHAPTER IV THE FRAU VON STEIN . 224 CHAPTER V PRIVATE THEATRICALS . . 232 CHAPTER VI MANY. COLOURED THREADS . 240 CHAPTER VII THE REAL PHILANTHROPIST ... . . 247 Contents xi BOOK V: 1779 TO 1793 CHAPTER I NEW BIRTH . . . . ... 261 CHAPTER II 'IPHIGENIA' . . . 264 CHAPTER III PROGRESS . . . 276 CHAPTER IV PREPARATIONS FOR ITALY . . 286 CHAPTER V ITALY . . 295 CHAPTER VI ' EGMONT ' AND ' TASSO ' . • . 3°4 CHAPTER VII RETURN HOME . . . 312 CHAPTER VIII CHRISTIANS VULPIUS . . . - 3i8 CHAPTER IX THE POET AS A MAN OF SCIENCE • 329 CHAPTER X THE CAMPAIGN IN FRANCE • 369 BOOK VI: 1794 TO 1805 CHAPTER I GOETHE AND SCHILLER . • • 385 CHAPTER II 'WILHELM MEISTER' . . . . 396 CHAPTER III THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL . • 407 xii Contents CHAPTER IV 'HERMANN UND DOROTHEA' . . ... 413 CHAPTER V THE THEATRICAL MANAGER . . ... 424 CHAPTER VI SCHILLER'S LAST YEARS . . ... 440 CHAPTER VII ' FAUST ' . . . . . . . 451 CHAPTER VIII THE LYRICAL POEMS . . . ... 486 BOOK VII: 1805 TO 1832 CHAPTER I THE BATTLE OF JENA . . . ... 492 CHAPTER II GOETHE'S WIFE . . . ... 496 CHAPTER III BETTINA AND NAPOLEON . . ... 499 CHAPTER IV LFFINITIES* . . ... 509 CHAPTER V POLITICS AND RELIGION . . . • • 5:5 CHAPTER VI THE ACTIVITY OF AGE . . ... 529 CHAPTER VII THE * SECOND^ PART QF FAUST ' • • 545 CHAPTER VIII THE CLOSING SCENES . . . • 554 INDEX BOOK THE FIRST 1749 to 1765 CHAPTER I PARENTAGE QUINTUS CURTIUS tells us that, in certain seasons, Bactria was darkened by whirlwinds of dust, which completely covered and concealed the roads. Left thus without their usual landmarks, the wanderers awaited the rising of the stars : To light them on their dim and perilous way. May we not say the same of Literature ? From time to time its pathways are so obscured beneath the rubbish of the age, that many a footsore pilgrim seeks in vain the hidden route. In such times let us imitate the Bactrians : let us cease to look upon the confusions of the day, and turning our gaze upon the great Immortals who have gone before, seek guidance from their light. In all ages the biographies of great men have been fruitful in lessons. In all ages they have been powerful stimulants to a noble ambition. In all ages they have been regarded as armouries wherein are gathered the weapons with which great battles have been won. There may be some among my readers who will dispute Goethe's claim to greatness. They will admit that he was a great poet, but deny that he was a great man. In denying it, they will set forth the qualities which constitute their ideal of greatness, and find- ing him deficient in some of these qualities, will dispute his claim. But in awarding him that title, I do not mean to imply that he was an ideal man ; I do not present him as the exemplar of all greatness. No man can be such an exemplar. Humanity reveals itself in fragments. One man is the exponent of one kind of excellence, another of another. Achilles wins the victory, and B 2 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i Homer immortalizes it : we bestow the laurel crown on both. In virtue of a genius such as modern times have only seen equalled once or twice, Goethe deserves the epithet of great ; unless we believe a great genius can belong to a small nature. Nor is it in virtue of genius alone that he deserves the title. Merck said of him that what he lived was more beautiful than what he wrote ; and his Life, amid all its weaknesses and all its errors, presents a picture of a certain grandeur of soul, which cannot be contemplated unmoved. I shall make no attempt to conceal his faults. Let them be dealt with as harshly as severest justice may dictate, they will not eclipse the central light which shines throughout his life. But although I neither wish to excuse nor to conceal faults which he assuredly had, we must always bear in mind that the faults of a celebrated man- are apt to carry an undue emphasis ; they are thrown into stronger relief by the very splendour of his fame. Had Goethe never written Faust no one would have heard that he was an inconstant lover, or a tepid politician. His glory immortalizes his shame. Let us begin as near the beginning as may be desirable, by glancing at his ancestry. That he had inherited his organization and tendencies from his forefathers, and could call nothing in him- self original, he has told us in these verses : Vom Vater hab' ich die Statur, Des Lebens ernstes Fiihren ; Von Miitterchen die Frohnatur, Die Lust zu falmliren. Urafinherr war der Schonsten hold, Das spukt so hin und wieder ; Urahnfrau liebte Schmuck und Gold, Das zuckt wohl durch die Glieder. Sind nun die Elemente nicht, Aus dem Complex zu trennen, Was ist denn an dem ganzen Wicht Original zu nennen ? * * From my father I inherit my_ frame, and the steady guidance of life ; from dear little mother my happy disposition, and love of story-telling. My ancestor was a '.ladies' man', and tha_t habit haunts me now and then ; my ancestress loved finery and show, which also runs in the blood. If, then, the elements are not to be separated from the whole, what can one call original in the descendant ? This is a very inadequate translation ; but, believing that to leave German un- translated is unfair to those whose want of leisure or inclination has prevented their acquiring the language, I shall throughout translate every word cited. At the same time it is unfair to the poet, and to the writer quoting the poet, to be forced to give translations which are after all felt not to represent the force and spirit of the original. I will do my best to give approximative translations, which the reader will be good enongh to accept as such, rather than be left in the dark. CHAP, i] Parentage 3 The first glimpse we get of his ancestry carries us back to about the middle of the seventeenth century. In the Grafschaft of Mans- feld, in Thuringia, the little town of Artern numbered among its scanty inhabitants a farrier, by name Hans Christian Goethe. His son, Frederick, being probably of a more meditative turn, selected a more meditative employment than that of shoeing horses : he became a tailor. Having passed an apprenticeship (not precisely that of Wilhelm Meister\ he commenced his Wanderings, in the course of which he reached Frankfurt. Here he soon found em- ployment, and being, as we learn, 'a ladies' man', he soon also found a wife. The master tailor, Sebastian Lutz, gave him his daughter, on his admission to the citizenship of Frankfurt and to the guild of tailors. This was in 1687. Several children were born, and vanished ; in 1 700 his wife, too, vanished, to be replaced, five years afterwards, by Frau Cornelia Schellhorn, the daughter of another tailor, Georg Walter ; she was then a widow, blooming with six- and-thirty summers, and possessing the solid attractions of a good property, namely, the hotel Zum Weidenhof, where her new husband laid down the scissors and donned the landlord's apron. He had two sons by her, and died in 1730, aged seventy-three. Of these two sons, the younger, Johann Caspar, was the father of our poet. Thus we see that Goethe, like Schiller, sprang from the people. He makes no mention of the lucky tailor, nor of the Thuringian farrier, in his autobiography. This silence may be variously interpreted. At first, I imagined it was aristocratic prudery on the part of von Goethe, minister and nobleman ; but it is never well to put ungenerous constructions, when others, equally plaus- ible and more honourable, are ready ; let us rather follow the advice of Arthur Helps, to ' employ our imagination in the service of charity '. We can easily imagine that Goethe was silent about the tailor, because, in truth, having never known him, there was none of that affectionate remembrance which encircles the objects of early life, to make this grandfather figure in the autobiography beside the grandfather Textor, who was known and loved. Prob- ably, also, the tailor was seldom talked of in the parental circle. There is a peculiar and indelible ridicule attached to the idea of a tailor in Germany, which often prevents people of much humbler pretensions than Goethe, from whispering their connexion with such a trade. Goethe does mention this grandfather in the Second Book of his Autobiography, and tells us how he was teased by the taunts of boys respecting his humble parentage ; these taunts even went 4 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i so far as to imply that he might possibly have had several grand- fathers ; and he began to speculate on the possibility of some latent aristocracy in his descent. This made him examine with some curiosity the portraits of noblemen to try and detect a likeness. Johann Caspar Goethe received a good education, travelled into Italy, became an imperial councillor in Frankfurt, and married, in 1748, Katharina Elizabeth, daughter of Johann Wolfgang Textor, the chief magistrate (Schultheiss)*. The genealogical tables of kings and conquerors are thought of interest, and why should not the genealogy of our poet be equally interesting to us ? In the belief that it will be so, I here subjoin it. Goethe's, faUjer was a cold, stern, formal, somewhat pedantic, but truth-loving upright-minded man. He hungered for knowledge ; and, although in general of a laconic turn, freely imparted all he learned. In his domestic circle his word was law. Not only imperious, but in some respects capricious, he was nevertheless greatly respected, if little loved, by wife, children, and friends. He is characterized by Krause as ein geradliniger Frankfurter Reichsburger — ' a formal Frankfurt citizen', whose habits were as measured as his gaitt. From him the poet inherited the well- built frame, the erect carriage, and the measured movement which in old age became stiffness, and was construed as diplomacy or haughtiness ; from him also came that orderliness and stoicism which have so much distressed those who cannot conceive genius otherwise than as vagabond in its habits. The craving for know- ledge, the delight in communicating it, the almost pedantic attention to details, which are noticeable in the poet, are all traceable in the father. The rooijier was more like what we conceive as the proper parSfil lor a poet. She is one of the pleasantest figures in German literature, and one standing out with greater vividness than almost * The family of Textor and Weber exists to this day, and under both names, in the Hohenlphe territory. Karl Julius Weber, the humorous author of Dentocritus and of the Briefe eines in Deutschland reisenden Deutschen was a member of it. In the description of the Jubil&utn of the Niirnberg University of Altorf, in 1723, mention is made of one Joannes Guolfgangus Textor as a bygone ornament of the faculty of law ; and Mr. Demmler, to whom I am indebted for these particulars, suggests the probability of this being the same John Wolfgang, who died as Oberbiirgermeister in Frankfurt, 1701. t Perhaps geradliniger might be translated as ' an old square-toes ', having reference to the antiquated cut of ths old man's clothes. The fathers of the present generation dubbed the stiff coat of their grandfathers, with its square skirts and collars, by the name of magister tnathcseos, the name by which the Pythagorean proposition is known in Germany. c >o •3^2 S .r Hfe -fllfi .* J 3-0 Csi O U "f -a 2 Z 8 ^^ — < «•" f11 S to "3 •- Z o> c x Jr '= ?, < *" IQ . J - rv t~ x £ ^ H .2Ei? E" 0 0 K - ^H ••3 X • M J ^W " *_Q K-O ^ "c 1;^ «" u w'-S 5| g w'C ^£ ? K *° GOETHE, bo ^ rf "° •* c « — ^ J2J *3 M ^* • UH o 1^§I_ &x ^H- i««? iU < W x|^| E*. fll&a dll S «" <12 n 5.2 S.-S OJ3 xj" Ed UT3 o jl W=o-_||^ |»g- 1 H u 0 FRI Mansfeld, wher 's daughter (die died as keeper 'OHANN CASPAR narried Aug. 20, l^.Js 5^8 u.« c . . ^"3^ -• *° M M S w -3 S-JP!? l~*a x. v. GOETHE, 1 0 "Sjl^ • — > ^ l^i^'"5 2M-"s^ ^ n Eo S g '„"« WOLFGA Sept. 18, "* $-, '•3 c w *^ „ Id J3 -X1 W*T3 CC'*"C Ed IH CQ 4> Ed x£;S2.j; B a I 5 X IP X Id W « ^ J § ,0^ 0 M h Id O rtW O — o ^•g ?** x'" ><« p O * ^ j Q'^ Ed *» H lr>.— ^ H > E^Z td > ^ ^ ^* < &* "O (3 >o 5 ^ O"*^«M ^o M" Z «5 OME«°° H' ' M -" S fc-ox>oM S c •« oo . a"5 z J°°i(L) - .S «-~ c^-s z oM^0«? gj-s .a ll •- !> bi'"5 §. «C...u2 x f. ' j*j O ^ S M .2 rt ^,° ^ * T3 tf G g Z "• Z o rt ,0 c •• <^ O .^ "3 U rt z c ^ 1 *5J "u (/i o^ rt HH .1 E w C 13 O < R - 3 "53 «T M 9 "o s UH sN 2 c V S J u - X 0*2 " ^ "to °M .j*9 p,/ S C! 3 >— > x c ~o "•£ 0 a p *o ? H > "Tg-.s s Q 4-> M ,» i 2 c/2 h-4 w H ffi H rEBER i the Jaxt district, n WEBER :cording to the cust 1 himself TEXTOR ANG TEXTOR the Electoral Cour died there Dec. 27, JOHANN NICOLAU: 1737, a wido ||| O oi~ o a v -§2tr- u .c 4-» s -| w" £ «!1 jj w J PQ |i 0=3 n* ||l O c rt z|| vocate to £< S-^ «"li| ANNA M. married the clerg) 3 £4 .LOGICAL T of Weickersheim, i f the Chancery at 1 into La Jo urt Judge and Pres First Syndic • of Justice and Ad lied 1716 12, 1693 i died Fel t Frankfort ; ma DR. CORNELIUS 1 ustice at Wetzlar (1 '5. '783 c M" j |!" < ° " <•& y — S.2 5 2 Z < c o 0 o n **- t~j z *** a W .a S O 0) =5 « s « °^'l. K "**" w W 0 G 1 5 •o >_ "~§| Ot *^ \5 oj t. ll||l irs-s 3 I M o 2 oT^ ^o '>T a"0 ^ rt"j! iT '3 X_w °T3 W"5 £• ^ c j § Hw w a -'S " B Mk j=ro "c .. H H a ^ "-°n - V .5 •§ z= z1^ z ". " D" o K 1 1 .fu rt V S K ^o ^*S H c g^ y _o ^ X fe H bi ^* o v 3 "s w 0. rt O 2"d * rt "Dl/1 < 0< c C ^ g.2 < 2 3 C <" a n * l< 2 CHAP, i] Parentage 7 any other. Her simple, hearty, joyous, and affectionate nature endeared her to all. She was the delight of children, the favourite of poets and princes. To the last retaining her enthusiasm and simplicity, mingled with great shrewdness and knowledge of character, Frau Aja, as they christened her, was at once grave and hearty, dignified and simple. She had read most of the best German and Italian authors, had picked up considerable desultory information, and had that ' mother wit ' which so often in women and poets seems to render culture superfluous, their rapid intuitions anticipating the tardy conclusions of experience. Her letters are full of spirit : not always strictly grammatical ; not irreproachable in orthography ; but vigorous and vivacious. After a lengthened interview with her, an enthusiast* exclaimed, 'Now do I under- stand how Goethe has become the man he is ! ' Wieland, Merck, Burger, Madame de Stael, Karl August, and other great people sought her acquaintance. The Duchess Amalia corresponded with her as with an intimate friend ; and her letters were welcomed eagerly at the Weimar Court. She was married at seventeen to a man for whom she had no love, and was only eighteen when the poet was bornt. This, instead of making her prematurely old, seems to have perpetuated her girlhood. 'I and my Wolfgang', she said, ' have always held fast to each other, because we were both young together'. To him she transmitted her love of story- telling, her animal spirits, her love of everything which bore the stamp of distinctive individuality, and her love of seeing happy faces around her. ' Order and quiet ', she says in one of her charming letters to Freiherr von Stein, ' are my principal character- istics. Hence I despatch at once whatever I have to do, the most disagreeable always first, and I gulp down the devil without looking at him. When all has returned to its proper state, then I defy any one to surpass me in good humour'. Her heartiness and tolerance are the causes, she thinks, why every one likes her. ' I am fond of people, and that every one feels directly — young and old. I pass without pretension through the world, and that gratifies men. I never demoralize any one — always seek out the good that is in them, and leave what is bad to him who made mankind, and knows how to round off the angles. In this way I make myself happy and comfortable '. Who does not recognize the son in those * Ephemeriden der Literatur, quoted in Nicolovius fiber Goethe. t Lovers of parallels may be reminded that Napoleon's mother was only eighteen when the hero of Austerlitz was born. 8 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i accents ? The kindliest of men inherited his loving happy nature from the heartiest of women. He also inherited from her his dislike of unnecessary agitation and emotion ; that deliberate avoidance of all things capable of disturbing his peace of mind, which has been construed as cold- ness. Her sunny nature shrank from storms. She stipulated with her servants that they were not to trouble her with afflicting news, except upon some positive necessity for the communication. In 1 805, when her son was dangerously ill at Weimar, no one ventured to speak to her on the subject. Not until he had completely re- covered did she voluntarily enter on it. ' I knew it all ', she remarked, 'but said nothing. Now we can talk about him without my feeling a stab every time his name is mentioned'. In this voluntary insulation from disastrous intelligence, there is something so antagonistic to the notorious craving for excitement felt by the Teutonic races, something so unlike the morbid love of intellectual drams — the fierce alcohol of emotion with which we intoxicate ourselves, that it is no wonder if Goethe has on this account been accused of insensibility. Yet, in truth, a very super- ficial knowledge of his nature suffices to show that it was not from coldness he avoided indulgence in the 'luxury of woe'. It was excess of sensibility, not want of sympathy. His delicate nature shrank from the wear and tear of excitement. That which to coarser natures would have been a stimulus, was to him a disturb- ance. It is doubtless the instinct of an emotional nature to seek such stimulants ; but his reason was strong enough to keep this instinct under control. Falk relates that when Goethe heard he had looked upon Wieland in death, ' and thereby procured myself a miserable evening, and worse night, he vehemently reproved me for it. . Why, said he, should I suffer the delightful impression of the features of my friend to be obliterated by the sight of a disfigured mask? I carefully avoided seeing Schiller, Herder, or the Duchess Amalia, in the coffin. I, for my part, desire to retain in my memory a picture of my departed friends more full of soul than the mere mask can furnish me '. This subjection of the instinct of curiosity to the dictates of reason is not coldness. There is danger indeed of carrying it foo far, and of coddling the mind ; but into this extreme neither Goethe nor his mother can be said to have fallen. At any rate, let the reader pronounce what judgment he thinks fit, it is right that he should at the outset distinctly understand it to be a character- CHAP, n] The Precocious Child 9 istic of the man. The self-mastery it implies forms the keystone of his character. In him the emotive was subjected to the intellectual. He was 'king over himself. He, as he tells us, found men eager enough to lord it over others, while indifferent whether they could rule themselves Das wollen alle Herren seyn, Und keiner ist Herr von sich ! 1. He made \ff his study to subdue into harmonious unity the rebellious impulses which incessantly threatened the supremacy of reason. Here, on the threshold of his career, let attention be called to this cardinal characteristic : his footsteps were not guided by a light tremulous in every gust, liable to fall to the ground amid the hurrying agitation of vulgar instincts, but ^ torch grasped by an iron will, and lifted high above the currents of trTose lower gusts, shedding a continuous steady gleam across the troubled path. I do not say he never stumbled. At times the clamorous agitation of rebellious passions misled him as it misleads others, for he was very human, often erring ; but viewing his life as it disposes itself into the broad masses necessary for a characteristic appreciation, I say that in him, more than in almost any other man of his time, naked vigour of resolution, moving in alliance with steady clearness of intellect, produced a self-mastery of the very highest kind*. This he owed partly to his father and partly to his mother. It was from the latter he derived those characteristics which deter- mined the movement and orbit of his artistic nature : her joyous, healthy temperament, humour, fancy, and suceptibility, were, in him, creative, owing to the marvellous insight which gathered up the scattered and vanishing elements of experience into new and living combinations. CHAPTER II THE PRECOCIOUS CHILD TOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE was born on the 28th J August, 1749, as the clock sounded the hour of noon, in the busy town of Frankfurt-on-the-Maine. The busy town, as may be supposed, was quite heedless of what was then passing in the * ' All I have had to do I have done in kingly fashion ', he said : ' I let tongues wag as they pleased. What I saw to be the right thing, that I did '. io Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK I corner of that low, heavy-beamed room in the Grosse Hirsch Graben, where an infant, black, and almost lifeless, was matched with agonizing anxiety — an anxiety dissolving into tears ot joy, as the aged grandmother exclaimed to the pale mother : ' Rathin, er lebt! he lives ! ' But if the town was heedless, not so were the stars, as astrologers will certify ; the stars knew who was gasping for life beside his trembling mother, and in solemn convocation they prefigured his future greatness. Goethe, with a grave smile, notes this conjunction of the stars. Whatever the stars may have betokened, this August 1749 was a momentous month to Germany, if only because it gave birth to the man whose influence on his nation has been greater than that of any man since Luther, not even excepting Lessing. A momentous month in very momentous times. It was the middle of the eighteenth century : a period when the movement which had culminated in Luther was passing from religion to politics, and freedom of thought was translating itself into liberty of action. From theology the movement had communicated itself to philos- ophy, morals, and politics. The agitation was still mainly in the higher classes, but it was gradually descending to the lower. A period of deep unrest : big with events which would expand the conceptions of all men, and bewilder some of the wisest. It is not the biographer's province to write a history of an epoch while telling the story of a life ; but some historical indication is necessary, in order that the time and place should be vividly before the reader's mind ; and perhaps the readiest way to call up such a picture in a paragraph will be to mention some of the 'notables' of that period, and at what points in their career they had arrived. In that very month of August Madame du Chatelet, the learned translator of Newton, the loving but pedantic Uranie of Voltaire, died in childbed, leaving him without a companion and without a counsellor to prevent his going to the court of Frederick the Great. In that year Rousseau was seen in the brilliant circle of Madame d'Epinay, disputing with the Encyclopaedists, declaiming eloquently on the sacredness of maternity, and going home to cast his newborn infant into the basket of the Foundling Hospital. In that year Samuel Johnson was toiling manfully over his English dictionary ; Gibbon was at Westminster, trying with unsuccessful diligence to master the Greek and Latin rudiments ; Goldsmith was delighting the Tony Lumpkins of his district, and the 'wander- ing bear-leaders of genteeler sort', with his talents, and enjoying CHAP, n] The Precocious Child 1 1 that 'careless idleness of fireside and easy chair', and that 'tavern excitement of the game of cards, to which he looked back so wistfully from his first hard London struggles'. In that year Bufifon, whose scientific greatness Goethe was one of the first to perceive, produced the first volume of his Histoire Naturelle. Haller was at Gottingen performing those experiments on sensi- bility and irritability which were to immortalize him. John Hunter, who had recently left Scotland, joined Cheselden at the Chelsea Hospital. Mirabeau and Alfieri were tyrants in their nurseries ; and Marat was an innocent boy of five years old, toddling about in the Val de Travers, unmolested as yet by the wickedness of ' les aristocrats '. If these names have helped to call up the period, we must seek in Goethe's own pages for a picture of the place. He has painted the city of Frankfurt as one who loved it. No city in Germany was better fitted for the birthplace of this cosmopolitan poet. It was rich in speaking memorials of the past, remnants of old German life, lingering echoes of the voices which sounded through the middle ages : such as a town within a town, the fortress within a fortress, the walled cloisters, the various symbolical ceremonies still preserved from feudal times, and the Jews' quarter, so pictur- esque, so filthy, and so strikingly significant. But if Frankfurt was thus representative of the past, it was equally representative of the present. The travellers brought there by the Rhine-stream, and by the great northern roads, made it a representative of Europe, and an emporium of Commerce. It was thus a centre for that distinctively modern idea — Industrialism — which began, and must complete, the destruction of Feudalism. This two-fold char- acter Frankfurt retains to the present day : the storks, perched upon its ancient gables, look down upon the varied bustle of Fairs held by modern Commerce in the ancient streets. The feeling for antiquity, and especially for old German life, which his native city would thus picturesquely cultivate, was rivalled by a feeling for Italy and its splendours which was cultivated under the paternal roof. His father had lived in Italy, and had retained an inextinguishable delight in all its beauties. His walls were hung with architectural drawings and views of Rome ; and the poet was thus familiar from infancy with the Piazza del Popolo, St. Peter's, the Coliseum, and other centres of grand associations. Typical of his own nature and strivings is this conjunction of the Classic and the German — the one lying 12 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i nearest to him, in homely intimacy, the other lying outside, as a mere scene he was to contemplate. Goethe by nature was more Greek than German, but he never freed himself from German influence. Thus much on time and place, the two cardinal conditions of life. Before quitting such generalities for the details of biography, it may be well to call attention to one hitherto unnoticed, viz., the moderate elevation of his social status. Placed midway between the two perilous extremes of affluence and want, his whole career received a modifying impulse from this position. He never knew adversity. This alone must necessarily have deprived him of one powerful chord which vibrates through literature. Adversity, the sternest of teachers, had nothing to teach him. He never knew the gaunt companionship of Want, whispering terrible suggestions. He never knew the necessity to conquer for himself breathing-room in the world ; and thus all the feelings of bitterness, opposition, and defiance, which accompany and perplex the struggle of life, were to him almost unknown ; and he was taught nothing of the aggressive and practical energy which these feelings develop in impetuous natures. How much of his serenity, how much of his dislike to politics, may be traced to this origin ? That he was the loveliest baby ever seen, exciting admiration wherever nurse or mother carried him, and exhibiting, in swaddling clothes, the most wonderful intelligence, we need no biographer to tell us. Is it not said of every baby? But that he was in truth a wonderful child we have undeniable evidence, and of a kind less questionable than the statement of mothers and relatives. At three years old he could seldom be brought to play with little children, and only on the condition of their being pretty. One day, in a neighbour's house, he suddenly began to cry and exclaim, ' That black child must go away ! I can't bear him ! ' And he howled till he was carried home, where he was slowly pacified ; the whole cause of his grief being the ugliness of the child. A quick, merry little girl grew up by the boy's side. Four other children also came, but soon vanished. Cornelia was the only companion who survived, and for her his affection dated from her cradle. He brought his toys to her, wanted to feed her and attend on her, and was very jealous of all who approached her. 'When she was taken from the cradle, over which he watched, his anger was scarcely to be quieted. He was altogether much more CHAP, n] The Precocious Child 13 easily moved to anger than to tears'. To the last his love for Cornelia was passionate. In old German towns, Frankfurt among them, the ground-floor consists of a great hall where the vehicles are housed. This floor opens in folding trap-doors, for the passage of wine-casks into the cellars below. In one corner of the hall there is a sort of lattice, opening by an iron or wooden grating upon the street. This is called the Gerdms. Here the crockery in daily use was kept ; here the servants peeled their potatoes, and cut their carrots and turnips, preparatory to cooking ; here also the housewife would sit with her sewing, or her knitting, giving an eye to what passed in the street (when anything did pass there) and an ear to a little neighbourly gossip. Such a place was of course a favourite with the children. One fine afternoon, when the house was quiet, Master Wolfgang, with his cup in his hand and nothing to do, finds himself in this Gerdms, looking out into the silent street ; and telegraphing to the young Ochsensteins, who dwelt opposite. By way of doing something he begins to fling the crockery into the street, delighted at the smashing music which it makes, and stimulated by the appro- bation of the brothers Ochsenstein, who chuckle at him from over the way. The plates and dishes are flying in this way, when his mother returns : she sees the mischief with a housewifely horror, melting into girlish sympathy, as she hears how heartily the little fellow laughs at his escapade, and how the neighbours laugh at him. This genial, indulgent mother employed her faculty for story- telling to his and her own delight. ' Air, fire, earth, and water I represented under the forms of princesses ; and to all natural phenomena I gave a meaning, in which I almost believed more fervently than my little hearers. As we thought of paths which led from star to star, and that we should one day inhabit the stars, and thought of the great spirits we should meet there, I was as eager for the hours of story-telling as the children themselves ; I was quite curious about the future course of my own improvization, and any invitation which interrupted these evenings was disagree- able. There I sat, and there Wolfgang held me with his large black eyes ; and when the fate of one of his favourites was not according to his fancy, I saw the angry veins swell on his temples, I saw him repress his tears. He often burst in with "But, mother, the princess won't marry the nasty tailor, even if he does kill the 14 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i giant". And when I made a pause for the night, promising to continue it on the morrow, I was certain that he would in the meanwhile think it out for himself, and so he often stimulated my imagination. When I turned the story according to his plan, and told him that he had found out the denouement, then was he all fire and flame, and one could see his little heart beating under- neath his dress ! His grandmother, who made a great pet of him, was the confidant of all his ideas as to how the story would turn out, and as she repeated these to me, and I turned the story according to these hints, there was a little diplomatic secrecy between us, which we never disclosed. I had the pleasure of continuing my story to the delight and astonishment of my hearers, and Wolfgang saw with glowing eyes the fulfilment of his own conceptions, and listened with enthusiastic applause'. What a charming glimpse of mother and son ! The grandmother here spoken of lived in the same house, and when lessons were finished, away the children hurried to her room, to play. The dear old lady, proud as a grandmother, ' spoiled ' them of course, and gave them many an eatable, which they would get only in her room. But of all her gifts nothing was comparable to the puppet-show with which she surprised them on the Christmas eve of 1753, and which Goethe says 'created a new world in the house'. The reader of Wilhelm Meister will remember with what solemn importance the significance of such a puppet-show is treated, and may guess how it would exercise the boy's imagination. There was also the grandfather Textor, whose house the children gladly visited, and whose grave personality produced an impression on the boy, all the deeper because a certain mysterious awe sur- rounded the monosyllabic dream-interpreting old gentleman. His portrait presents him in a perruque a huit etages, with the heavy golden chain round his neck, suspending a medal given him by the Empress Maria Theresa ; but Goethe remembered him more vividly in his dressing-gown and slippers, moving amid the flowers of his garden, weeding, training, watering ; or seated at the dinner table where on Sundays he received his guests. The mother's admirable method of cultivating the inventive acti- vity of the boy, finds its pendant in the father's method of cultivating his receptive faculties. He speaks with less approbation than it deserved of his father's idea of education ; probably because, late in life he felt keenly his deficiencies in systematic training. But the principle upon which the father proceeded was an excellent one, CHAP, n] The Precocious Child 15 namely, that of exercising the intellect rather than the memory. An anecdote was dictated, generally something from every-day life or perhaps a trait from the life of Frederick the Great ; on this the boy wrote dialogues and moral reflections in Latin and German. Some of these have been preserved and published ; a glance at them shows what a mastery over Latin was achieved in his eighth year. We can never be quite certain that the hand of the master is not mingled with that of the child ; but the very method of independence which the master throughout pursued is contrary to a supposition of his improving the exercises, although the style is certainly above what even advanced pupils usually achieve. Dr. Wisemann of Frankfurt, to whom we are indebted for these exer- cises and compositions, written during Goethe's sixth, seventh, and eighth years, thinks there can be no doubt of their being the un- assisted productions of the boy. In one of the dialogues there is a pun which proves that the dialogue was written in Latin first, and then translated into German. It is this : the child is making wax figures, his father asks him why he does not relinquish such trivialities. The word used is ituces, which, meaning trivialities in a metaphorical sense, is by the boy wilfully interpreted in its ordinary sense, as nuts — '•cera nunc ludo non nucibus'1 — I play with wax, not with nuts. The German word ausse means nuts simply, and has no metaphorical meaning. Here is one of his moral reflections. ' Horatius and Cicero were indeed Heathens, yet more sensible than many Christians ; for the one says silver is baser than gold, gold than virtue ; and the other says nothing is so beautiful as virtue. Moreover, many Heathens have surpassed Christians in virtue. Who was truer in friendship than Damon?, more generous than Alexander?, more just than Aristides?, more abstinent than Diogenes?, more patient than Socrates ?, more humane than Vespasian ?, more industrious than Apelles and Demosthenes?' Platitudes these, doubtless; but they are platitudes which serve many as the ripe maxims of maturity. They give us a notion of the boy being somewhat ' old- fashioned', and they show great progress in culture. His progress in Greek was remarkable, as may be seen from his published exercises. Italian he learned by listening to his father teaching Cornelia. He pretended to be occupied with his own lesson, and caught up all that was said. French, too, he learned, as the exer- cises testify ; and thus before he is eight, we find him writing German, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek. 1 6 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i He was, in fact, a precocious child. This will probably startle many readers, especially if they have adopted the current notion tha.t precocity is a sign of disease, and that marvellous children are necessarily evanescent fruits which never ripen, early blossoms which wither early. Observatum fere est celerius occidere festin- atam maturitatem, says Quintilian, in the mournful passage which records the loss of his darling son ; and many a proud parent has seen his hopes frustrated by early death, or by natural mediocrity following the brilliant promise. It may help to do away with some confusion on this subject, if we bear in mind that men distinguish themselves by receptive capacity and by productive capacity ; they learn, and they invent. In men of the highest class these two qualities are united. Shakespeare and Goethe are not less re- markable for the variety of their knowledge, than for the activity of their invention. But as we call the child clever who learns his lessons rapidly, and the child clever who shows wit, sagacity, and invention, this ambiguity of phrase has led to surprise when the child who was ' so clever' at school, turns out a mediocre man ; or, conversely, when the child who was a dunce at school, turns out a man of genius. Goethe's precocity was nothing abnormal. It was the activity of a mind at once greatly receptive and greatly productive. Through life he manifested the same eager desire for knowledge, not in the least alarmed by that bugbear of 'knowledge stifling originality', which alarms some men of questionable genius and unquestionable ignorance. He knew that if abundant fuel stifles miserable fires, it makes the great fire blaze. Ein Quidam sagt : ' Ich bin von keiner Schule ; Kein Meister lebt mit dem ich buhle ; Auch bin ich weit davon entfernt Dass ich von Todten was gelernt '. Das heisst, wenn ich ihn recht verstand : ' Ich bin ein Narr auf eigne Hand ! ' * In the summer of 1754 the old house was entirely rebuilt, Wolf- gang officiating at the ceremony of laying the foundation, dressed * An exquisite epigram, which may be rendered thus : An author boasting said : ' I follow none ; I owe my wisdom to myself alone ; To neither ancient nor to modern sage Am I indebted for a single page'.— To place this boasting in its proper light : This author is— a Fool in his own Right 1 CHAP, n] The Precocious Child 17 as a little bricklayer. The quick, observant boy found much in this rebuilding of the paternal house to interest him ; he chatted with the workmen, learning their domestic circumstances, and learning something of the builder's art, which in after years so often occupied him. This event, moreover, led to his being sent to a friend during the restoration of the upper part of the house — for the family inhabited the house during its reconstruction, which was made storey by storey from the ground upwards — and the event also led to his being sent to school. Viehoff thinks that Germany would have had quite another Goethe had the child been kept at a public school till he went to the university ; and quotes Gervinus to the effect that Goethe's home education prevented his ever thoroughly appreciating history, and the struggles of the masses. Not accepting the doctrine that Character is formed by Circumstances, I cannot accept the notion of school life affecting the poet to this extent. We have only to reflect how many men are educated at public schools without their imbibing a love of history and sympathy with the masses, to see that Goethe's peculiarities must have had some other source than home education. That source lay in his character. Moreover, it is extremely questionable whether Goethe could have learned to sympathize with the masses in a school of one of the German imperial towns, where there could be no 'masses', but only close corporations, ruled and ruling according to narrow and somewhat sordid ideas. From intercourse with the sons of Frankfurt citizens, no patriotism, certainly no republicanism, was to be learned. Nor was the public teaching, especially the historical teaching, likely to counteract this influence, or to inspire the youth with great national sympathies. Those ideas had not penetrated schools and universities. History, as taught by Schiller and Heeren, was undreamed of. ' When I entered at Tubingen in 1826', writes Mr. Demmler to me, 'the university of Paulus, Schelling, Hegel, and, in days of yore, of Melanchthon, Reuchlin, and Kepler, traditions were still surviving of the lectures of Rosier, professor of history. In one of them, as I was told by a fellow of the college who had heard it, the old cynical sceptic said, "As regards the Maid of Orleans, I conclude she was a cow girl, and was, moreover, on a very friendly footing with the young officers ". Another time he said, " Homer was a blind schoolmaster and wandering minstrel, and I cannot comprehend the fuss that is made about his poems'". If this was, the man who instructed c 1 8 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i Schelling and Hegel (1790-94), we may form some estimate of what Goethe would have heard forty years earlier. One thing, however, he did learn at school, and that was disgust at schools. He, carefully trained at home, morally as well as physically, had to mingle with schoolboys who were what most schoolboys are, — dirty, rebellious, cruel, low in their tastes and habits. The contrast was very painful to him, and he was glad when the completion of his father's house once more enabled him to receive instruction at home. One school anecdote he relates which well illustrates his power of self-command. Fighting during school time was severely punished. One day the teacher did not arrive at the appointed time. The boys played together till the hour was nearly over, and then three of them, left alone with Wolfang, resolved to drive him away. They cut up a broom, and reappeared with the switches. 'I saw their design, but I at once resolved not to resist them till the clock struck. They began pitilessly lashing my legs. I did not stir, although the pain made the minutes terribly long. My wrath deepened with my endurance, and on the first stroke of the hour I grasped one of my assailants by the hair and hurled him to the ground, pressing my knee on his back ; I drew the head of the second, who attacked me behind, under my arm and nearly throttled him ; with a dexterous twist I threw the third flat on the ground. They bit, scratched, and kicked. But my soul was swelling with one feeling of revenge, and I knocked their heads together without mercy. A shout of murder brought the household round us. But the scattered switches and my bleeding legs bore witness to my story'. CHAPTER III EARLY EXPERIENCES T T is profoundly false to say that ' Character is formed by Circumstance', unless the phrase, with unphilosophic equivoca- tion, include the whole complexity of circumstances, from Creation downwards. Character is to outward Circumstance what the Organism is to the outward world : living in it, but not specially determined by it. A wondrous variety of vegetable and animal organisms live and flourish under circumstances which furnish the GHAP. in] Early Experiences 19 means of living, but do not determine the specific forms of each organism. In the same way "various characters live under identical circumstances, nourished by them, not formed by them. Each character assimilates, from surrounding circumstance, that which is by it assimilable, rejecting the rest ; just as from the earth and air the plant draws those elements which will serve it as food, rejecting the rest. Every biologist -knows that Circumstance has a modifying influence ; but he also knows that those modifications are only possible within certain limits. Abundance of food and peculiar treatment will modify the ferocity of a wild beast ; but it will not make the lion a lamb. I have known a cat, living at a mill, from abundance of fish food take spontaneously to the water: but the cat was distinctively a cat, and not an otter, although she had lost her dread of water. Goethe truly says that if Raphael were to paint peasants at an inn he could not help making them look like Apostles, whereas Teniers would make his Apostles look like Dutch boors ; each artist working according to his own inborn genius. Instead, therefore, of saying that man is the creature of Circum- stance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of Circumstance. It is Character which builds an existence out of Circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels, one warehouses, another villas ; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks, until the architect can make them something else. Thus it is that in the same circumstances, one man rears a stately edifice, while his brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives for ever amid ruins : the block of granite which was an obstacle on the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone on the pathway of the strong*. If the reader agrees with this conception of the influence of cir- cumstances, he will see that I was justified in laying some stress on Goethe's social position, though I controverted Viehoff and Ger- vinus on the point of school education. The continued absence of Want is one of those permanent and powerful conditions which necessarily modify a character. The well-fed lion loses his ferocity. * ' The greatness or the smallness of a man is determined for him at his birth, as strictly as it is determined for a fruit, whether it is to be a currant or an apricot. Education, favourable circumstances, resolution, industry, may do much, in a certain sense they do everything; that is to say, they determine whether the poor apricot shall fall in the form of a green bead, blighted by the east wind, and be trodden under foot ; : or whether it shall expand into tender pride and sweet brightness of golden velvet '. — RUSKIN, Modem Painters, iii, p. 44. 2o Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i But the temporary and incidental effect of school education, and other circumstances of minor importance, can never be said to modify a character ; they only more or less accelerate its develop- ment. Goethe furnishes us with a striking illustration of the degree in which outward circumstances affect character. He became early the favourite of several eminent painters, was constantly in their ateliers, playing with them, and making them explain their works to him. He was, moreover, a frequent visitor at picture sales and gal- leries, till at last his mind became so familiarized with the subjects treated by artists, that he could at once tell what historical or biblical subject was represented in every painting he saw. Indeed, his imagination was so stimulated by familiarity with these works, that in his tenth or eleventh year he wrote a description of twelve possible pictures on the history of Joseph, and some of his concep- tions were thought worthy of being executed by artists of renown. It may be further added, in anticipation, that during the whole of his life he was thrown much with painters and pictures, and was for many years tormented with the desire of becoming an artist. If, therefore, Circumstance had the power of forming faculty, we ought to find him a painter. What is the fact ? The fact is that he had not the faculty which makes a painter ; he had no faculty, properly speaking, for plastic art, and years of labour, aided by the instruction and counsel of the best masters, were powerless to give him even a respectable facility. All therefore that Circumstance did in this case was to give his other faculties the opportunity of exercising themselves in art ; it did not create the special faculty required. Circumstance can create no faculty : it is food, not nutrition ; opportunity, not character. Other boys, besides Goethe, heard the Lisbon earthquake eagerly discussed ; but they had not their religious doubts awakened by it, as his were awakened in his sixth year. This catastrophe, which, in 1755, spread consternation over Europe, he has described as having greatly perturbed him. The narratives he heard of a magnificent capital suddenly smitten — churches, houses, towers, falling with a crash — the bursting land vomiting flames and smoke — and sixty thousand souls perishing in an instant — shook his faith in the beneficence of Providence. ' God, the creator and preserver of heaven and earth ', he says, ' whom the first article of our creed declared to be so wise and benignant, had not displayed paternal care in thus consigning both the just CHAP, in] Early Experiences 21 and the unjust to the same destruction. In vain my young mind strove to resist these impressions. It was impossible ; the more so as the wise and religious themselves could not agree upon the view to be taken of the event '. At this very time Voltaire was agitating the same doubts : Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes : Dieu s'est venge, leur mort est le prix de leur crimes ? Quel crime, quelle faute ont commis ces enfans Sur le sein maternal ecrases et sanglans ? Lisbonne qui n'est plus, eut-elle plus de vices Que Londres, que Paris, plonges dans les delices ? Lisbonne est abimee ; et 1'on danse & Paris. We are not, however, to suppose that the child rushed hastily to such a conclusion. He debated it in his own mind as he heard it debated around him. Bettina records that on his coming one day from church, where he had listened to a sermon on the subject, in which God's goodness was justified, his father asked him what impression the sermon had made. 'Why', said he, 'it may after all be a much simpler matter than the clergyman thinks ; God knows very well that an immortal soul can receive no injury from a mortal accident'. Doubts once raised would of course recur, and the child began to settle into a serious disbelief in the benignity of Providence, learning to consider God as the wrathful Deity depicted by the Hebrews. This was strengthened by the foolish conduct of those around him, who, on the occasion of a terrible thunder- storm which shattered the windows, dragged him and his sister into a dark passage, ' where the whole household, distracted with fear, tried to conciliate the angry Deity by frightful groans and prayers '. Many children are thus made sceptics ; but in a deeply reflective mind such thoughts never long abide, at least not under the influences of modern culture, which teaches that Evil is essentially a narrow finite thing, thrown into obscurity on any comprehensive view of the Universe ; and that the amount of evil massed together from every quarter must be held as small compared with the broad beneficence of Nature. The doubts which troubled Wolfgang gradually subsided. In his family circle he was the silent, reflective listener to constant theological debates. The various sects separating from the estab- lished church all seemed to be animated by the one desire of 22 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i approaching the Deity, especially through Christ, more nearly than seemed possible through the ancient forms. It occurred to him that he, also, might make such an approach, and in a more direct way. Unable to ascribe a form to the Deity, he 'resolved to seek Him in His works, and in the good old Bible fashion, to build an altar to Him'. For this purpose he selected some types, such as ores and other natural productions, and arranged them in symbol- ical order on the elevations of a music stand ; on the apex was to be a flame typical of the soul's aspiration, and for this a pastille did duty. Sunrise was awaited with impatience. The glittering of the house tops gave signal ; he applied a burning-glass to the pastille, and thus was the worship consummated by a priest of seven years old, alone in his bedroom !* Lest the trait just cited should make us forget that we are tracing the career of a child, it may be well to recall the anecdote related by Bettina, who had it from his mother; it will serve to set us right as to the childishness. One day his mother, seeing him from her window cross the street with his comrades, was amused with the gravity of his carriage, and asked laughingly, if he meant thereby to distinguish himself from his companions. The little fellow replied, 'I begin with this. Later on in life I shall distinguish myself in far other ways'. On another occasion, he plagued her with questions as to whether the stars would perform all they had promised at his birth. 'Why', said she, 'must you have the assistance of the stars, when other people get on very well without?' ' I am not to be satisfied with what does for other people ! ' said the juvenile Jupiter. He had just attained his seventh year when the Seven Years' War broke out. His grandfather espoused the cause of Austria, his father that of Frederick. This difference of opinion brought with it contentions, and finally separation between the families. The exploits of the Prussian army were enthusiastically cited on the one side and depreciated on the other. It was an all-absorbing topic, awakening passionate partisanship. Men looked with strange feelings on the struggle which the greatest captain of his age was maintaining against Russia, Austria, and France. The ruler of not more than five millions of men was fighting unaided against the rulers of more than a hundred millions ; and, in spite of his * A similar anecdote is related of himself by that strange Romancist, once the idol of his day, and now almost entirely forgotten, Kestif de la Bretonne. — See Les Illumines, par GEKAKD DE NERVAL. CHAP, in] Early Experiences 23 alleged violation of honour, it was difficult to hear without enthusi- asm of his brilliant exploits. Courage and genius in desperate circumstances always awaken sympathy ; and men paused not to ask what justification there was for the seizure of Silesia, nor why the Saxon standards drooped heavily in the churches of Berlin. The roar of victorious cannon stunned the judgment ; the intrepid general was blindly worshipped. The Seven Years' War soon became a German epos. Archenholtz wrote its history (1791); and this work — noisy with guard-room bragging and folly, the rant of a miles gloriosus turned philosophe — was nevertheless re- ceived with enthusiasm, was translated into Latin, and read in school in company with Tacitus and Caesar. This Seven Years' War was a circumstance from which, as it is thought, Goethe ought to have received some epic inspiration. He received from it precisely that which was food to his character. He caught the grand enthusiasm, but, as he says, it was the personality of the hero, rather than the greatness of his cause, which made him rejoice in every victory, copy the songs of triumph, and the lampoons directed against Austria. He learnt now the effects of party spirit. At the table of his grandfather he had to hear galling sarcasms and vehement declamations showered on his hero. He heard Frederick 'shamefully slandered'. 'And as in my sixth year, after the Lisbon earthquake, I doubted the beneficence of Providence, so now, on account of Frederick, I began to doubt the justice of the world'. Over the doorway of the house in which he was born was a lyre and a star, announcing, as every interpreter will certify, that a poet was to make that house illustrious. The poetic faculty early manifested itself. We have seen him inventing conclusions for his mother's stories ; and as he grew older he began to invent stories for the amusement of his playfellows, after he had filled his mind with images Lone sitting on the shores of old Romance. He had read the Orbis Pictus, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Homer's Iliad in prose, Virgil in the original, Telemachus, Robinson Crusoe, Ansorfs Voyages, with such books as Fortunalus, The Wandering Jew, The Four Sons of Aymon, etc. He also read and learned by heart most of the poets of that day : Gellert, Haller, who had really some gleams of poetry ; and Canitz, Hagedorn, Drollinger, — writers then much beloved, now slumbering upon dusty shelves, 24 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i unvisited, except by an occasional historian, and by spiders of an inquiring mind. Not only did he tell stories, he wrote them also, as we gather from a touching little anecdote preserved by Bettina. The small- pox had carried off his little brother Jacob. To the surprise of his mother, Wolfgang shed no tears, believing Jacob to be with God in heaven. ' Did you not love your little brother, then', asked his mother, ' that you do not grieve for his loss ? ' He ran to his room, and from under the bed drew a quantity of papers on which he had written stories and lessons. ' All these I had written that I might teach them to him ', said the child. He was then nine years old. Shortly before the death of his brother he was startled by the sound of the warder's trumpet from the chief tower, announcing the approach of troops. This was in January 1759. It seemed as if the warder never would cease blowing his sounding horn. On came the troops in continuous masses, and the rolling tumult of their drums called all the women to the windows, and all the boys in admiring crowds into the streets. The troops were French. They seized the guard-house, and in a little while the city was a camp. To make matters worse, these troops were at war with Frederick, whom Wolfgang and his father worshipped. They were soon billeted through the town, and things relapsed into their usual routine, varied by a military occupation. In the Goethe-house an important person was quartered, — Count de Thorane, the king's lieutenant, a man of taste and munificence, who assembled round him artists and celebrities, and won the affectionate admiration of Wolfgang, though he failed to overcome the hatred of the old councillor. This occupation of Frankfurt brought with it many advantages to Goethe. It relaxed the severity of paternal book education, and began another kind of tuition — that of life and manners. The perpetual marching through the streets, the brilliant parades, the music, the ' pomp, pride, and circumstance ' were not without their influence. Moreover, he now gained conversational familiarity with French*, and acquaintance with the theatre. The French nation always carries its ' civilization ' with it, namely, a cafe and a theatre. In Frankfurt both were immediately opened, and Goethe was presented with a ' free admission ' to the theatre, a privilege he used daily, not always understanding, but always enjoying what * He says that he had never learned French before ; but this is erroneous, as his exercises prove. CHAP, in] Early Experiences 25 he saw. In tragedy the measured rhythm, slow utterance, and abstract language enabled him to understand the scenes, better than he understood comedy, wherein the language, besides moving amid the details of private life, was also more rapidly spoken. But at the theatre, boys are not critical, and do not need to under- stand a play in order to enjoy it*. A Racine, found upon his father's shelves, was eagerly studied, and the speeches were de- claimed with more or less appreciation of their meaning. The theatre, and acquaintance with a chattering little braggart, named Derones, gave him such familiarity with the language, that in a month he surprised his parents with his facility. This Derones was acquainted with the actors, and introduced him ' behind the scenes '. At ten years of age to go ' behind the scenes ' means a great deal. We shall see hereafter how early he was introduced behind the scenes of life. For the present let it be noted that he was a frequenter of the green-room, and admitted into the dressing-room, where the actors and actresses dressed and undressed with philosophic disregard to appearances ; and this, from repeated visits, he also learned to regard as quite natural. A grotesque scene took place between these two boys. Derones excelled, as he affirmed, in 'affairs of honour'. He had been engaged in several, and had always managed to disarm his antagonist, and then nobly forgive him. One day he pretended that Wolfgang had insulted him : satisfaction was peremptorily demanded, and a duel was the result. Imagine Wolfgang, aged twelve, arrayed in shoes and silver buckles, fine woollen stockings, dark serge breeches, green coat with gold facings, a waistcoat of gold cloth, cut out of his father's wedding waistcoat, his hair curled and powdered, his hat under his arm, and little sword, with silk sword-knot. This little manikin stands opposite his antagonist with theatrical formality ; swords clash, thrusts come quick upon each other, the combat grows hot, when the point of Derones' rapier lodges in the bow of Wolfgang's sword-knot ; hereupon the French boy, with great magnanimity, declares that he is satisfied ! * Well do I remember, as a child of the same age, my intense delight at the French theatre, although certainly no three consecutive phrases could have been understood by me. Nay, so great was this delight, that although we regarded the French custom, of opening theatres on Sunday, with the profoundest sense of its ' wickedness', the attrac- tion became Irresistible : and one Sunday night, at Nantes, my brother and I stole into the theatre with pricking consciences. To this day I see the actors gesticulating, and hear the audience cry bis I bis! redemanding a couplet (in which we joined with a stout British encore!); and to this day I remember how we laughed at what we certainly understood only in passing glimpses. Goethe's ignorance of the language was, I am sure, no obstacle to his enjoyment. 26 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i The two embrace, and retire to a cafe" to refresh themselves with a glass of almond milk*. Theatrical ambition, which stirs us all, soon prompted Wolfgang. As a child he had imitated Terence ; he was now to make a more elaborate effort in the style of Piron. When the play was com- pleted he submitted it to Derones, who, pointing out several grammatical blunders, promised to examine it more critically, and talked of giving it his support with the manager. Wolfgang saw, in his mind's eye, the name of his play already placarded at the corners of the street ! Unhappily Derones in his critical capacity was merciless. He picked the play to pieces, and stunned the the poor author with the critical jargon of that day ; proclaimed the absolute integrity of the Three Unities, abused the English, laughed at the Germans, and maintained the sovereignty of French taste in so confident a style, that his listener was without a reply. If silenced, however, he was not convinced. It set him thinking on those critical canons. He studied the treatise on the Unities by Corneille, and the prefaces of Racine. The result of these studies was profound contempt for that system ; and it is, perhaps, to Derones that we owe something of the daring defiance of all ' rule ', which startled Germany in Goetz von Berlichingen. VARIOUS STUDIES A T length, June 1761, the French quitted Frankfurt ; and "^^ studies were seriously resumed. Mathematics, music, and drawing were commenced under paternal superintendence. For mathematics Wolfgang had no aptitude ; for music little ; he learned to play on the harpsichord, and subsequently on the violoncello, but he never attained any proficiency. Drawing continued through life a pleasant exercise. Left now to the calm of uninterrupted studies, he made gigantic strides. Even the hours of recreation were filled with some useful occupation. He added Engli^to his polyglot store ; and to keep up his several languages, he invented a Romance, wherein six or seven brothers and sisters scattered over the world corresponded * To remove incredulity, it may be well to remind the reader that to this day German youths fight out their quarrels with swords — not fists. CHAP, iv] Various Studies 27 with each other. The eldest describes in good German all the incidents of his travels ; his sister answers in womanly style with short sharp sentences, and nothing but full stops, much as Siegwart was afterwards written. Another brother studies theology, and therefore writes in Latin, with postcripts in Greek. A third and a fourth, clerks at Hamburg and Marseilles, take English and French ; Italian is given to a musician ; while the youngest, who remains at home, writes in Jew-German. This romance led him to a more accurate study of geography. Having placed his characters in various parts of the globe, he was not satisfied till he had a distinct idea of these localities, so that the objects and events should be consonant with probability. While trying to master the strange dialect — Jew-German — he was led to the study of Hebrew. As the original language of the Old Testament this seemed to him an indispensable acquisition. His father consented to give him a Hebrew master ; and although he attained no scholarship in that difficult language, yet the reading, translating, and committing to memory of various parts of the Bible, brought out the meaning more vividly before him ; as every one will understand who compares the lasting effect produced by the laborious school reading of Sallust and Livy, with the facile reading of Robertson and Hume. The Bible made a profound impression upon him. To a boy of his constitutional reflectiveness, the severe study of this book could not fail to exercise a deep and permeating influence ; nor, at the same time, in one so accustomed to think for himself, could it fail to awaken certain doubts. ' The contradiction', he says, 'between the actual or possible, and tradition, forcibly arrested me. I often posed my tutors with the sun standing still on Gideon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon ; not to mention other incongruities and impossibilities. All my doubts were now awakened, as in order to master the Hebrew I studied the literal version by Schmidt, printed under the text'. One result of these Hebrew studies was a biblical poem on Joseph and his Brethren ; which he dictated to a poor half idiot who lived in his father's house, and who had a mania for copying or writing under dictation. Goethe soon found the process of dictation of great service ; and through life it continued to be his favourite mode of composition. All his best thoughts and expres- sions, he says, came to him while walking ; he could do nothing seated. To these multifarious studies in Literature must be added 28 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i multifarious studies of Life. The old Frankfurt city with its busy crowds, its fairs, its mixed population, and its many sources of excitement, offered great temptations, and great pasture to so desultory a genius. This is perhaps a case wherein Circumstance may be seen influencing the direction of Character. A boy of less impressionable nature, of less many-sided curiosity, would have lived in such a city undisturbed ; some eyes would see little of the variety, some minds would be unsolicited by the exciting objects. But Goethe's desultory, because impulsive, nature found continual excitement in fresh objects ; and he was thus led to study many things, to grasp at many forms of life, instead of concentrating himself upon a few. A large continuity of thought and effort was perhaps radically uncongenial to such a tempera- ment ; yet one cannot help speculating whether under other circumstances he might not have achieved it. Had he been reared in a quiet little old German town, where he would have daily seen the same faces in the silent streets, and come in contact with the same characters, his culture might have been less various, but it might perhaps have been deeper. Had he been reared in the country, with only the changing seasons and the sweet serenities of Nature to occupy his attention when released from study, he would certainly have been a different poet. The long summer afternoons spent in lonely rambles, the deepening twilight filled with shadowy visions, the slow uniformity of his external life necessarily throwing him more and more upon the subtler diversities of inward experience, would inevitably have influenced his genius in quite different directions, would have animated his works with a very different spirit. Yet who shall say that to him this would have been all gain? Who shall say that it would not have been a loss? For such an organization as his the life he led was perhaps the very best. He was desultory, and the varieties of objects which solicited his attention, while they helped to encourage that tendency, also helped to nourish his mind with images and experience, such as afterwards became the richest material for his art. His mind was concrete, and in this many-coloured life at Frankfurt it found abundant material. At any rate it is idle to speculate on what would have been ; we must concern ourselves with what was. The boy saw much of life, in the lower as in the upper classes. He passed from the society of" the Count de Thorane, and of the artists whom the Count assembled round him (from whom the boy learned some- CHAP, iv] Various Studies 29 thing of the technical details of painting), to the society of the Jews in the strange, old, filthy, but deeply interesting Judengasse; or to that of various artizans, in whose shops his curiosity found perpetual food. The Jews were doubly interesting to him : as social pariahs, over whom there hovered a mingled mystery of terror and contempt ; and as descendants of the Chosen People, who preserved the language, the opinions, and many of the customs of the old biblical race. He was impressed by their adherence to old customs ; by their steadfastness and courageous activity ; by their strange features and accents ; by their bright cleverness and good nature. The pretty Jewish maidens, also, smiled agreeably upon him. He began to mingle with them ; managed to get permission to attend some of their ceremonies ; and attended their schools. As to artizans, he was all his life curious about their handicrafts, and fond of being admitted into their family circles. Scott himself was not fonder of talking to one ; nor did Scott make better use of such manifold ex- perience. Frederika's sister told her visitor that Goethe knew several handicrafts, and had even learned basket-making from a lame man in Sesenheim. Here in Frankfurt the boy was welcome in many a shop. The jeweller, Lautensack, gladly admitted him to witness the mysteries of his art, while he made the bouquet of jewels for the Kaiser, or a diamond snuff-box which Rath Goethe had ordered as a present for his wife ; the boy eagerly questioning him respecting precious stones, and the engravings which the jeweller possessed. Nothnagel, the painter, had established an oil-cloth manufactory ; and the boy not only learned all the processes, but lent a helping hand. Besides these forms of life, there were others whose influence must not be overlooked ; one of these bring before us the Fraulein von Klettcnburg, of whom we first get a glimpse in connection with his Confirmation, which took place at this period, 1763. The readers of Wilhelm Meister are familiar with this gentle and exquisite character, where she is represented in the ' Confessions of a Beautiful Soul ' *. In the ' Confessions ' we see that the 'piety' and retirement are represented less as the consequences of evangelical illumination, than of moral serenity and purity shrinking from contact with a world of which it has been her fate * Or as we in England, following Carlyle, have been misled into calling it, the 'Con- fessions of a B'air Saint '. The schone Seele — une belle dme, was one of the favourite epithets of the last century. Goethe applies it to Klopstock, who was neither ' saint nor fair '. 30 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i to see the coarsest features. The real Fraulein von Klettenburg it is perhaps now impossible to separate from the ideal so beauti- fully painted by Goethe. On him her influence was avowedly very great, both at this period and subsequently. It was not so much the effect of religious discussion, as the experience it gave him of a deeply religious nature. She was neither bigot nor prude. Her faith was an inner light which shed mild radiance around hert. Moved by her influence, he wrote a series of Religious Odes, after the fashion of that day, and greatly pleased his father by presenting them copied neatly into a quarto volume. His father begged that every year he would present him with such a volume. A very different sort of female influence has now to be touched on. His heart began to flutter with the emotions of love. He was not quite fifteen, when Gretchen, the sister of one of his dis- reputable companions, first set his youthful pulses throbbing to the movements of the divine passion. The story is told in a rambling way in the Autobiography, and may here be very briefly dismissed. He had often turned his poetical talents to practical purposes, namely, writing wedding and funeral verses, the produce of which went in joyous feastings. In these he was almost daily thrown with Gretchen ; but she, though kind, treated him as a child, and never permitted the slightest familiarity. A merry life they led, in picnics and pleasure bouts ; and the coronation of the Kaiser Joseph II. was the occasion of increased festivity. One night, after the fatigues of a sight-seeing day, the hours rolled unheeded over these thoughtless, merry heads, and the stroke of midnight startled them. To his dismay, Wolfgang found he had forgotten , the door-key with which hitherto he had been able to evade paternal knowledge of his late hours. Gretchen proposed that they should all remain together, and pass the night in conversation. This was agreed on. But, as in all such cases, the effort was vain. Fatigue weighed down their eyelids ; conversation became feebler and feebler ; two strangers already slumbered in corners of the room ; one friend sat in a corner with his betrothed, her head reposing on his shoulder ; another crossing his arms upon the table, rested his head upon them— and snored. The noisy room had become silent. Gretchen and her lover sat by the window talking in undertones. Fatigue at length conquered her also, and drooping her head upon his shoulder she too slept. With tender t In VARNHAGKN VON_ENSE'S Verniischte Schriften (vol. iii, p. 33), the reader will find a few significant details respecting this remarkable person, and some of her poems. CHAP, iv] Various Studies 3 1 pride he supported that delicious burden, till like the rest he gave way, and slept. It was broad day when he awoke. Gretchen was standing before a mirror arranging her cap. She smiled on him more amiably than ever she had smiled before ; and pressed his hand tenderly as he departed. But now, while he seemed drawing nearer to her, the denouement was at hand. Some of the joyous companions had been guilty of nefarious practices, such as forgeries of documents. His friend and Gretchen were involved in the accusation, though falsely. Wolfgang had to undergo a severe investigation, which, as he was perfectly innocent, did not much afflict him ; but an affliction came out of the investigation, for Gretchen in her deposition concerning him, said, ' I will not deny that I have often seen him, and seen him with pleasure, but I treated him as a child, and my affection for him was merely that of a sister'. His exasperation may be imagined. A boy aspiring to the dignity of manhood knows few things more galling than to be treated as a boy by the girl whom he has honoured with his homage. He suffered greatly at this destruction of his romance : nightly was his pillow wet with tears ; food became repugnant to him ; life had no more an object. But pride came to his aid ; pride and that volatility of youth, which compensates for extra sensitiveness by extra facility for forgetting. He threw himself into study, especially of philosophy, under guidance of a tutor, a sort of Wagner to the young Faust. This tutor, who preferred dusty quartos to all the landscapes in the world, used to banter him upon being a true German, such as Tacitus describes, avid of the emotions excited by solitude and scenery. Laughter weaned him not from the enjoyment. He was enjoying his first sorrow : the luxury of melancholy, the romance of a forlorn existence, drove him into solitude. Like Bellerophon he fed upon his own heart, away from the haunts of men. He made frequent walking excursions. Those mountains which from earliest childhood had stood so distant, 'haunting him like a passion ', were now his favourite resorts. He visited Homburg, Kronburg, Konigstein, Wiesbaden, Schwalbach, Biberich. These filled his mind with lovely images. Severer studies were not neglected. To please his father he was diligent in application to jurisprudence ; to please himself he was still more diligent in literature :. Morhofs Polyhistor, Cessna's hagoge, and Battle's Dictionary, filled him with the ambition to 32 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i become an University Professor. Herein, as, indeed, throughout his career, we see the strange impressibility of his nature, which, like the fabled chameleon, takes its colour from every tree it lies under. The melancholy fit did not last long. A circle of lively friends, among them Horn, of whom we shall hear more anon, drew him into gaiety again. Their opinion of his talents appears to have been enormous ; their love for him, and interest in all he did, was of the kind which followed him through life. No matter what his mood — in the wildest student-period, in the startling genius-period, and in the diplomatic-period — whatever offence his manner created, was soon forgotten in the irresistible fascination of his nature. The secret of that fascination was his own overflowing lovingness, and his genuine interest in every individuality, however opposite to his own. With these imperfect glances at his early career we close this book, on his departure from home for the university of Leipsic. Before finally quitting this period, we may take a survey of the characteristics it exhibits, as some guide in our future inquiries. A CHAPTER V THE CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN S in the soft round lineaments of childhood we trace the features which after years will develop into more decided forms, so in the moral lineaments of the Child may be traced the characteristics of the Man. But an apparent solution of con- tinuity takes place in the transition period ; so that the Youth is in many respects unlike what he has been in childhood, and what he will be in maturity. In youth, when the passions begin to stir, the character is made to swerve from the orbit previously traced. Passion, more than Character, rules the hour. Thus we often see the prudent child turn out an extravagant youth ; but he crystal- lizes once more into prudence, as he hardens with age. This was certainly the case with Goethe, who, if he had died young, like Shelley or Keats, would have left a name among the most genial, not to say extravagant, of poets ; but who, living to the age of eighty-two, had fifty years of crystallization to acquire a definite figure which perplexes cri.ti.cs. In his childhood, scanty CHAP, v] The Child is Father to the Man 33 as the details are which enable us to reconstruct it, we see the main features of the man. Let us glance rapidly at them. And first of his manysidedness. Seldom has a boy exhibited such variety of faculty. The multiplied activity of his life is prefigured in the varied tendencies of his childhood. We see him as an orderly, somewhat formal, inquisitive, reasoning, deliberative child, a precocious learner, an omnivorous reader, and a vigorous logician who thinks for himself— so independent, that at six years of age he doubts the beneficence of the Creator ; at seven, doubts the competence and justice of the world's judgment. He is inventive, poetical ; proud, loving, volatile, with a mind open to all influences, swayed by every gust, and yet, while thus swayed as to the direction of his activity, master over that activity. The most diverse characters, the most antagonistic opinions interest him. He is very studious : no bookworm more so ; alternately busy with languages, mythology, antiquities, law, philosophy, poetry, and religion ; yet he joins in all festive scenes, gets familiar with life in various forms, and stays out late o' nights. He is also troubled by melancholy, dreamy moods, forcing him ever and anon into solitude. Among the dominant characteristics, however, are seriousness, formality, rationality. He is by no means a naughty boy. He gives his parents no tremulous anxiety as to what will become of him. He seems very much master of himself. It is this which in later years perplexed his judges, who could not reconcile this appearance of self-mastery, this absence of enthusiasm, with their conceptions of a poet. Assuredly he had enthusiasm, if ever man had it : at least, if enthusiasm (being 'full of the God') means being filled with a divine idea, and by its light working steadily. He had little of the other kind of enthusiasm — that insurrection of the feelings carrying away upon their triumphant shoulders the Reason which has no longer power to guide them ; for his intellect did not derive its main momentum from his feelings. And hence it is that whereas the quality which first strikes us in most poets is sensi- bility, with its caprices, infirmities, and generous errors ; the first quality which strikes us in Goethe — the Child and Man, but not the Youth — is intellect, with its clearness and calmness. He has also a provoking immunity from error. I say provoking, for we all gladly overlook the errors of enthusiasm ; some, because these errors appeal to our compassion ; and some, because these errors establish a community of impulse between the sinner and our- D 34 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK i selves, forming, as it were, broken edges which show us where to look for support — scars which tell of wounds we have escaped. Whereas, we are pitiless to the cold prudence which shames our weakness and asks no alms from our charity. Why do we all preach Prudence, and secretly dislike it? Perhaps, because we dimly feel that life without its generous errors might want its last- ing enjoyments ; and thus the very mistakes which arise from an imprudent, unreflecting career, are absolved by that instinct which suggests other aims for existence beyond prudential aims. This is one reason why the erring lives of Genius command such death- less sympathy. Having indicated so much, I may now ask those who are dis- tressed by the calm, self-sustaining superiority of Goethe in old age, whether, on deeper reflection, they cannot reconcile it with their conceptions of the poet's nature? We admire Rationality, but we sympathize with Sensibility. Our dislike of the one arises from its supposed incompatibility with the other. But if a man unites the mastery of Will and Intellect to the profoundest sensibility of Emotion, shall we not say of him that he has in living synthesis vindicated both what we preach and what we love ? That Goethe united these will be abundantly shown in this Biography. In the chapters about to follow we shall see him wild, restless, aimless, erring, and extravagant enough to satisfy the most ardent admirer of the vagabond nature of genius : the Child and the Man will at times be scarcely traceable in the Youth. One trait must not be passed over, namely, his impatient suscepti- bility, which, while it prevented his ever thoroughly mastering the technic of any one subject, lay at the bottom of his multiplied activity in directions so opposed to each other. He was excessively im- pressible, caught the impulse from every surrounding influence, and was thus never constant to one thing, because his susceptibility was connected with an impatience which soon made him weary. There are men who learn many languages, and never thoroughly master the grammar of one. Of these was Goethe. Easily excited to throw his energy in a new direction, he had not the patience which begins at the beginning, and rises gradually, slowly into assured mastery. Like an eagle he swooped down upon his prey ; he could not watch for it, with cat-like patience. It is to this im- patience we must attribute the fact of so many works being left fragments, so many composed by snatches during long intervals. CHAP, v] The Child is Father to the Man 35 Prometheus, Mahomet, Die Natiirliche Tochter, Elpenor, Achilleis, Nausiktia, remain fragments. Faust, Egmont, Tasso, Iphigenia, Meister, were many years in hand. Whatever could be done in a few days — while the impulse lasted — was done ; longer works were spread over a series of years. BOOK THE SECOND 1765 to 1771 CHAPTER I THE LEIPSIC STUDENT TN the month of October 1765, Goethe, aged sixteen, arrived in Leipsic, to commence his collegiate life, and to lay, as he hoped, the solid foundation of a future professorship. He took lodgings in the Feuerkugel, between the Old and New Markets, and was by the rector of the University inscribed on the igth a student 'in the Bavarian nation'. At that period, and until quite recently, the University was classed according to four 'Nations', viz., the Misntan, the Sawn, the Bavarian, and the Polish. When the inscription was official, the 'nations' were vhat in Oxford and Paris are called ' tongues ' ; when not official, hey were students' clubs, such as they exist to this day. Goethe, as a Frankfurter, was placed in the Bavarian*. If the reader has any vivid recollection of the Leipsic chapters in the Autobiography, "let me beg him to dismiss them with all haste from his mind ; that very work records the inability of recalling the enchanting days of youth ' with the dimmed powers of an aged mind' ; and it is evident that the calm narrative of his Excellency J. W. von Goethe very inaccurately represents the actual condition of the raw, wild j&jdenf, just escaped from the paternal roof, with money which seems unlimited in his purse, with the world before him which his genius is to open. His own letters, and the letters of his friends, enable us ' to read between the lines ' of the Autobiography, and to read there a very different account. He first presented himself to Hofrath Bohme, a genuine German professor, shut within the narrow circle of his speciality. To him, Literature and the Fine Arts were trivialities ; and when * Otto Jahn, in the Briefe an Leipziger Freundc, p. 9. 36 CHAP, i] The Leipsic Student 37 the confiding youth confessed his secret ambition of studying belles lettres, in lieu of the jurisprudence commanded by his father, he met with every discouragement. Yet it was not difficult to persuade this impressible student that to rival Otto and Heineccius was the true ambition of a vigorous mind. He set to work in earnest, at first, as students usually do on arriving at seats of learning. His attendance at the lectures on philosophy, history of law, and jurisprudence, was assiduous enough to have pleased even his father. But this flush of eagerness quickly subsided. Lggir was invincLbly_repugnant to him. He hungered for realities, and could not be satisfied with definitions. To see operations of his mind which, from childhood upwards, had been conducted with perfect ease and unconsciousness, suddenly pulled to pieces, in order that he might gain the superfluous knowledge of what they were, and what they were called, was to him tiresome and frivolous. ' I fancied I knew as much about God and the world as the professor himself, and logic seemed in many places to come to a dead standstill'. We are here on the threshold of that experience which has been immortalized in the scene between Mephistopheles and the Student. Jurisprudence soon became almost equally tiresome. He already knew as much law as the professor thought proper to communicate ; and what with the tedium of the lectures, and the counter-attraction of delicious fritters, which used to come 'hot from the pan precisely at the hour of lecture', no wonder that volatile Sixteen soon abated attendance. Volatile he was, wild, and somewhat rough, both in appearance and in speech. He had brought with him a wild, uneasy spirit struggling towards the light. He had also brought with him the rough manners of Frankfurt, the strong Frankfurt dialect and colloquialisms, rendered still more unfit for the Leipsic salon by a mixture of proverbs and biblical allusions. Nay, even his costume was in unpleasant contrast with that of the society in which he moved. He had an ample wardrobe, but unhappily it was doubly out of fashion : it had been manufactured at home by one of his father's servants, and thus was not only in the Frankfurt style, but grotesquely made in that style. To complete his discomfiture, he saw a favourite low comedian throw an audience into fits of laughter by appearing on the stage dressed precisely in that costume, which he had hitherto worn as the latest novelty ! All who can remember the early humiliations of being far behind 38 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n their companions in matters of costume, will sympathize with this youth. From one of his letters written shortly after his arrival, we may catch a glimpse of him. ' To-day I have heard two lectures : Bohme on law, and Ernesti on Cicero's Orator. That'll do, eh ? Next week we have collegium philosophicum et mathematicum. I haven't seen Gottsched yet. He is married again. She is nineteen and he sixty-five. She is four feet high, and he seven feet. She is as thin as a herring, and he as broad as a feathersack. I make a great figure here ! But as yet I am no dandy. I never shall become one. I need some skill to be industrious. In society, concerts, theatre, feastings, promenades, the time flies. Ha ! it goes gloriously. But also expensively. The devil knows how my purse feels it. Hold ! rescue ! stop ! There go two louis d'or. Help ! there goes another. Heavens ! another couple are gone. Pence are here as farthings are with you. Nevertheless one can live cheaply here. So I hope to get off with two hundred thalers — what do I say ? with three hundred. N.B. Not including what has already gone to the devil'. Dissatisfied with College, he sought instruction elsewhere. At the table where he dined daily, kept by Hofrath Ludwig the rector, he met several medical students. He heard little talked of but medicine and botany, and the names of Haller, Linnaeus, and Buffon were incessantly cited with respect. His ready quickness to interest himself in all that interested those around him, threw him at once into these studies, which hereafter he was to pursue with passionate ardour, but which at present he only lightly touched. Another source of instruction awaited him, one which through life he ever gratefully acknowledged, namely, the society of women. wmst du genau erfahren was sich ziemt> So frage nur bei edlen Frauen an ! * So he speaks in Tasso ; and here, in Leipsic, he was glad to learn from Frau Bohme not only some of the requisites for society, but also some principles of poetic criticism. This delicate, accomplished woman was able to draw him into society, to teach him 1'ombre and picquet, to correct some of his awkwardnesses, and lastly to make him own that the poets he admired were a deplorable set, and that his own imitations of them deserved no better fate than the flames. He had got rid of his absurd wardrobe at one fell swoop, without a murmur at the expense. He now had also to * Wouldst clearly learn what the Becoming is, inquire of noble-minded women ! CHAP, i] The Leipsic Student 39 cast away the poetic wardrobe brought from home with so much pride. He saw that it was poetic frippery— saw that his own poems were lifeless ; accordingly, a holocaust was made of all his writings, prose and verse, and the kitchen fire wafted them into space. But society became vapid to him at last. He was not at his ease. Cards never amused him, and poetical discussion became painful. ' I have not written a long while ', he writes to his friend Riese. ' Forgive me. Ask not after the cause ! It was not occupation, at all events. You live contented in Marburg ; I live so here. Solitary, solitary, quite solitary. Dear Riese, this solitude has awakened a certain sadness in my soul : It is my only pleasure, Away from all the world, To lie beside the streamlet, And think of those I love. But contented as I am, I still feel the want of old companions. I sigh for my friends and my maiden, and when I feel that my sighs are vain, TheQ fills my heart with sorrow> My eye is dim ; The stream which softly passed me, Roars now in storm. No bird sings in the bushes, The zephyr which refreshed me Now storms from the north, And whirls off the blossoms. With tremor I fly from the spot, — I fly, and seek in deserted streets Sad solitude. Yet how happy I am, quite happy ! Horn has drawn me from low spirits by his arrival. He wonders why I am so changed. He seeks to find the explanation, Smiling thinks o'er it, looks me in the face ; But how can he find out my cause of grief? I know it not myself. But I must tell you something of myself : Quite other wishes rise within me now, Dear friend, from those you have been wont to hear. You know how seriously I wooed the Muse ; With what a hate I scorned those whom the Law 40 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n And not the Muses beckoned. And you know How fondly I (alas ! most falsely) hoped The Muses loved me, — gave me gift of song ! My Lyre sounded many a lofty song, But not the Muses, not Apollo sent them. True, it is my pride made me believe The Gods descended to me, and no Master Produced more perfect works than mine ! No sooner came I here, than from my. eyes Fell off the scales, as I first learned to prize Fame, and the mighty efforts fame required. Then seemed to me my own ambitious flight But as the agitation of a worm, Who in the dust beholds the eagle soar, And strives to reach him ; strains every nerve, Yet only agitates the dust he lies in. Sudden the wind doth rise, and whirls the dust In clouds, the worm is also raised with it : Then the poor worm believes he has the wings Of eagles, raising him too in the air ! But in another moment lulls the wind, The cloud of dust drops gently on the ground, And with the dust the worm, who crawls once more ! Don't be angry with my galimathias. Good-bye. Horn will finish this letter'. Not only is this letter curious in its revelations of his state of mind, but the verses into which it spontaneously flows, and which I have translated with more jealous fidelity to the meaning than to poetical reproduction, show how among his friends he was even then regarded as a future poet. The confession uttered in the final verses clearly owes its origin to Frau Bohme's criticisms ; but it is not every young poet who can be so easily discouraged. Even his discouragement could not last long. Schlosser, after- wards his brother-in-law, came to Leipsic, and by his preaching and example once more roused the productive activity which showed itself in German, French, English, and Italian verses. Schlosser, who was ten years his senior, not only awakened emulation by his own superior knowlege and facility, but further aided him by introducing him to a set of literary friends, with whom poetic discussions formed the" staple, of c6nVerSMion. This circle met at the house of one Scho'nkopf, a Weinhandler and Hausivirth, living in the Brtihl, No. 79*. To translate these * The house still stands there, but has been almost entirely remodelled. CHAP, i] The Leipsic Student 41 words into English equivalents would only mislead the reader. Schonkopf kept neither an hotel, nor a public house, but what in Germany is a substitute for both. He sold wine, and kept a table d'hote; occasionally also let bedrooms to travellers. His wife, a lively, cultivated woman, belonging to a good family in Frankfurt, drew Frankfurt visitors to the house ; and with her Goethe soon became on terms of intimacy, which would seem surprising to the English reader who only heard of her as an innkeeper's wife. He became one of the family, and fell in love with the daughter. I must further beg the reader to understand that in Germany, to this day, there is a wide difference between the dining customs and our own. The English student, clerk, or bachelor, who dines at an eating-house, chop-house, or hotel, goes there simply to get his dinner, and perhaps look at The Times. Of the other diners he knows nothing, cares little. It is rare that a word is interchanged between him and his neighbour. Quite otherwise in Germany. There the same society is generally to be found at the same table. The table d'hote is composed of a circle of habitues, varied by occasional visitors, who in time become, perhaps, members of the circle. Even with strangers conversation is freely interchanged ; and in a little while friendships are formed over these dinner tables, according as natural tastes and likings assimilate, which, extending beyond the mere hour of dinner, are carried into the current of life. Germans do not rise so hastily from the table as we ; for time with them is not so precious ; life is not so crowded ; time can be found for a quiet after-dinner talk. The cigars and coffee, which appear before the cloth is removed, keep the company together; and in that state of suffused comfort which quiet digestion creates, they hear without anger the opinions of antagonists. In such a society we must imagine Goethe in the Schonkopf establishment, among students and men of letters, all eager in advancing their own opinions, and combating the false taste which was not their own. To complete this picture, and to separate it still more from our English customs, you must imagine host and hostess dining at the table, while their charming daughter, who had cooked or helped to cook the dinner, brought them the wine. This daughter was the Anna Katharina, by intimates called Kathchen, and by Goethe, in the Autobiography, designated as Annchen and Annette. Her portrait, still extant, is very pleasing. She was then nineteen, lively, and loving ; how could she be insensible 42 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n to the love of this glorious youth, in all the fervour of genius, and with all the attractions of beauty ? They saw each other daily, not only at dinner but in the evenings, when he accom- panied the piano of her brother by a feeble performance on the flute. They also got up private theatricals, in which Goethe and Kathchen played the lovers. Minna von Barnhelm, then a novelty, was among the pieces performed. That these per- formances were of a strictly amateur order may be gathered from the fact that in one of them the part of a nightingale, which is important, was represented by a handkerchief, rolled up into such ornithological resemblance as art could reach. Two letters, quite recently discovered, have fallen into my hands ; they give us a curious glimpse of him at this time, such as one may look for in vain in his own account of himself, or in the accounts of any other writer. They are from his friend Horn, whose arrival he mentioned in the letter previously quoted, and who was one of his daily companions in Frankfurt. The first is dated I2th of August, 1766, and is addressed to one Moors, a Frankfurt companion. 'To speak of our Goethe ! He is still the same proud, fantastic personage as when I came hither. If you only saw him, you would either be mad with anger or you would burst with laughter. I cannot at all understand how a man can so quickly transform himself. His manners and his whole bearing, at present, are as different as possible from his former behaviour. Over and above his pride, he is a dandy ; and all his clothes, handsome as they are, are in so odd a taste that they make him conspicuous among all the students. But this is indifferent to him ; one may re- monstrate with him for his folly as much as one likes Man mag Amphion seyn und Feld und Wald bezwingen, Nur keinen Goethe nicht kann man zur Klugheit bringen*. All his thought and effort is only to please himself and his lady- love. In every circle he makes himself more ridiculous than agreeable. Merely because the lady admires it, he has put on tricks and gestures that one cannot possibly refrain from laughing at. He has adopted a walk which is quite insufferable. If you only saw it ! n marche a pas compt ,s> Comme un Recteur suivi des quatre Facultes. * One may be Amphion and coerce the trees and rocks, but not bring Goethe to his senses. CHAP, i] The Leipsic Student 43 His society is every day more intolerable to me, and he, too, tries to avoid me whenever he can. I am too plain a man for him to walk across the street with me. What would the "king of Holland" say if he saw him in this guise? Do write again to him soon and tell him your opinion ; else he and his lady-love will remain as silly as ever. Heaven only preserve me, as long as I am here, from any sweetheart, for the women here are the very devil. Goethe is not the first who has made a fool of himself to please his Dulcinea. I only wish you could see her just for once : she is the most absurd creature in the world. Her mine coquette avec un air hautain is all with which she has bewitched Goethe. Dear friend ! how glad should I be if Goethe were still what he was in Frankfurt! Good friends as we were formerly, we can now scarcely endure each other for a quarter of an hour. Yet with time I still hope to convert him, though it is a hard matter to make a coxcomb wise. But I will venture everything for the sake of it. Ach ! friichtete dies mien Bemiihn ! Ach ! konnt' ich meinen Zweck erreichen ! Ich wollt' nicht Luther, nicht Calvin, Noch einem der Bekehrer weichen*. I cannot write to him again what I have here told you. I shall be delighted if you will do so. I care neither for his anger nor for that of his lady-love. For, after all, he is not easily offended with me ; even when we have quarrelled he sends for me next day. So much of him ; more another time. Live and forget not thy HORN'. Moors followed Horn's advice, and expressed to Goethe, appar- ently in very plain terms, his astonishment and dissatisfaction at the disadvantageous change. In October of the same year, he received from Horn the following explanation : ' But, dear Moors ! how glad you will be to learn that we have lost no friend in our Goethe, as we falsely supposed. He had so travestied himself as to deceive not only me but a great many others, and we should never have discovered the real truth of the matter, if your letter had not threatened him with the loss of a friend. I must tell you the whole story as he himself told it to me, for he has commissioned me to do. so in order to save him the * Ah, if my attempt succeed, I should not envy Luther, Calvin, nor any other Con- verter. 44 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n trouble. He is in love, it is true — he has confessed it to me, and will confess it to you ; but his love, though its circumstances are sad, is not culpable, as I formerly supposed. He loves. But not that young lady whom I suspected him of loving. He loves a girl beneath him in rank, but a girl whom — I think I do not say too much — you would yourself love if you saw her. I am no lover, so I shall write entirely without passion. Imagine to yourself a woman, well grown, though not very tall ; a round, agreeable, though not extraordinarily beautiful face ; open, gentle, engaging manners ; a very pretty understanding, without having had any great education. He loves her very tenderly, with the perfect, honest intentions of a virtuous man, though he knows that she can never be his. Whether she loves him in return I know not. You know, dear Moors, that is a point about which one cannot well ask ; but this much I can say to you, that they seem to be born for each other. Now observe his cunning ! That no one may suspect him of such an attachment, he undertakes to persuade the world of precisely the opposite, and hitherto he has been extraordinarily successful. He makes a great parade, and seems to be paying court to a certain young lady of whom I have told you before. He can see his beloved and converse with her at certain times without giving occasion for the slightest suspicion, and I often accompany him to her. If Goethe were not my friend I should fall in love with her myself. Meanwhile he is supposed to be in love with the Fraulein (but what do you care about her name ?) and people are fond of teasing him about her. Per- haps she herself believes that he loves her, but the good lady deceives herself. Since that time he has admitted me to closer confidence, has made me acquainted with the affairs, and shown me that his expenditure is not so great as might be supposed. He is more of a philosopher and moralist than ever ; and innocent as his love is, he nevertheless disapproves it. We often dispute about this, but let him take what side he will, he is sure to win ; for you know what weight he can give to only apparent reasons. I pity him and his good heart, which really must be in a very melancholy condition, since he loves the most virtuous and perfect of girls without hope. But if we suppose that she loves him in return, how miserable must he be on that very account ! I need not explain that to you, who so well know the human heart. He has told me that he will write you one or two things about it himself. There is no necessity for me to CHAP, i] The Leipsic Student 45 recommend silence to you on this subject ; for you yourself see how necessary it is. . . . ' Imagine this somewhat fantastic youth assured that his passion is returned, and then imagine him indulging in the boyish caprice of tormenting his beloved. There is nothing more cruel than youth ; and youthful lovers, once assured of victory, are singularly prone to indulge in the most frivolous pretexts for ingeniously tormenting. ' Man loves to conquer, likes not to feel secure', Goethe says, in the piece wherein he dramatized this early experience : Erringen will der Mensch ; er will nicht sicher seyn. Had Kathchen conquetted with him, keeping him in the exquisite pain of suspense, she would have been happier : but as he said in his little poem, Der Wahre Genuss, ' she is perfect, and her only fault is that she loves me ' : Sie ist volkommen, und sie fehlet Darin allein dass sie mich liebt. He teased her with trifles and idle suspicions ; was jealous without cause, convinced without reason ; plagued her with fantastic quarrels, till at last her endurance was exhausted, and her love was washed away in tears. No sooner was he aware of this than he repented, and tried to recover the jewel which like a prodigal he had cast away. In vain. He was in despair, and tried in dissipation to forget his grief. A better issue was poetry. Several of his lyrics bore the burden of this experience ; and one entire play, or pastoral, is devoted to a poetical representation of these lovers' quarrels : this is Die Laune des Verliebten, which is very curious as the earliest extant work of the great poet, and as the earliest specimen of his tendency to turn experience into song. In the opera of Erwin und Elmire he subsequently treated a similar subject, in a very different manner. The first effort is the more curious of the two. The style of composition is an imitation of those pastoral dramas, which, originated by Tasso and Guarini in the soft and almost luscious Aminta and Pastor Fido, had by the French been made popular all over Europe. Two happy and two unhappy lovers are somewhat artificially contrasted ; the two latter representing Kathchen and the poet. Action there is none ; the piece is made up of talk about love, some felicitous verses of the true stamp and ring, and an occasional 46 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n glimpse of insight into the complexities of passion. Eridon, the jealous lover, torments his mistress in a style at once capricious and natural ; with admirable truth she deplores his jealousy and excuses it : Zwar oft betriibt er mich, doch riihrt ihn auch mein Schmerz. Wirft er mir etwas vor, fangt er mich an zu plagen, So darf ich nur ein Wort, ein gutes Wort nur sagen, Gleich ist er umgekehrt, die wilde Zanksucht flieht, Er weint sogar mit mir, wenn er mich weinen sieht*. It is admirably said that the very absence of any cause for grief prompts him to create a grief: Da er kein Elend hat, will er sick Elend machen. Amine is also touched with a delicate pencil. Her lovingness, forgivingness, and endurance are from the life. Here is a couplet breathing the very tenderness of love : Der Liebe leichtes Band machst du zum schweren Joch. Du qualst mich als Tyrann ; und ich? ich lieb dich nochl\ One more line and I have done : Egle" is persuading Eridon that Amine's love of dancing is no trespass on her love for him ; since, after having enjoyed her dance, her first thought is to seek him : Und durch das Suchen selbst -wirst du ihr immer lieber%. In such touches as these lurks the future poet ; still more so in the very choice of the subject. Here, as ever, he does not cheat himself with pouring feigned sorrows into feigning verse : he embalms his own experience. He does not trouble himself with drawing characters and events from the shelves of the library : his soul is the fountain of his inspiration. His own life was uniformly the text from which he preached. He sang what he had felt, and because he had felt it ; not because others had sung before him. He was the echo of no man's joys and sorrows, he was the lyrist of his own. This is the reason why his poems have an endless charm : they are as indestructible as passion itself. They reach our hearts because they issue from his. Every bullet * 'Tis true he vexes me, and yet my sorrow pains him. Yet let him but reproach — begin to tease me, Then need I but a word, a single kind word utter, Away flies all his anger in a moment, And he will weep with me, because he sees me weep. t The fairy link of Love thou mak'st a galling yoke. Thou treat'st me as a si ive ; and I ? I love thee still ! t And in the very search her heart grows fonder of thee. CHAP. l] The Leipsic Student 47 hits the mark, according to the huntsman's superstition, if it have first been dipped in the marksman's blood. He has told us emphatically, that all his works are but frag- ments of the grand confession of his life. Of him we may say what Horace so well says of Lucilius, that he trusted his secrets to books as to faithful friends : Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim Credebat libris ; neque, si male cesserat, unquam Decurrens alio, neque si bene : quo fit, ut omnis Votiva pateat veluti descripta lobelia Vita sent's *. How clearly he saw the nullity of every other procedure is shown in various passages of his letters and conversations. Riemer has preserved one worth selecting : ' There will soon be a poetry without poetry, a real irofyo-ty, where the subject matter is tv ironfa-et, in the making: a manufactured poetry 't. He dates from Leipsic the origin of his own practice, which he says was a tendency he never could deviate from all his life : ' namely, the tendency to transform into an image, a poem, everything which delighted or troubled me, or otherwise occupied me, and to come to some distinct understanding with myself upon it, to set my inward being at rest'. The reason he gives for this tendency is very questionable. He attributes it to the isolation in which he lived with respect to matters of taste forcing him to look within for poetical subjects. But had not the tendency of his genius lain in that direction, no such circumstances could have directed it. Young, curious, and excitable as he was, nothing is more natural than that he should somewhat shock the respectabilities by his pranks and extravagancies. His constant companion was Behrisch, one of the most interesting figures among these Leipsic friends. With strongly marked features and a certain dry causticity of manner, always well dressed, and always preserving a most staid demeanour, Behrisch was about thirty years of age, and had an ineradicable love of fun and mystification. He could treat trifles with an air of immense importance. He would invent narratives about the perversity and absurdity of others, in order * Sermon., lib. n, i. t Briefs von und an Goethe. Herausgeg. von RIEMER. 1846. What follows is untranslateable, from the play on words : ' Die Dichter heissen dann so, wie schon Moritz spasste, a spissando, dcnsando, vom Dichtmachen, weil sie Alles zusammen- drangen, und kommen mir vor wie eine Art Wurstmacher, die in den Darm des Hexa- meters oder Trimeters ihre Wort- und Sylbenf ulle stopfen '. 48 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n to convulse his hearers with the unction of his philippics against such absurdity. He was fond of dissipation, into which he carried an air of supreme gravity. He rather affected the French style of politesse, and spoke the language well ; and, above all, he had some shrewd good sense, as a buttress for all his follies. Behrisch introduced him to some damsels who ' were better than their reputation ', and took him into scenes more useful to the future poet than advantageous to the repute of the young student. He also laughed him out of all respect for gods, goddesses, and other mythological inanities which still pressed their heavy dull- ness on his verse ; would not let him commit the imprudence of rushing into print, but calmed the author's longing, by beautifully copying his verses into a volume, adorning them with vignettes. Behrisch was, so to speak, the precursor of Merck ; his influence not so great, but somewhat of the same kind. The friends were displeased to see young Goethe falling thus away from good society into such a disreputable course ; but just as Lessing before him had neglected the elegant Leipsic world for actors and authors of more wit than money, and preferred Mylius, with his shoes down at heel, to all that the best dressed society could offer ; so did young Goethe neglect salon and lecture-hall for the many-coloured scene of life in less elegant circles. Enlightened by the result, we foresee that the poet will receive little injury from these sources ; he is gaining experience, and experience even of the worst sides of human nature will be sublimated into noble uses, as carrion by the wise farmer is turned into excellent manure. In this great drama of life every Theatre has its Green- room ; and unless the poet know how it is behind the scenes he will never understand how actors speak and move. Goethe had often been ' behind the scenes ', looking at the skeleton which stands in almost every house. His adventure with Gretchen, and its consequences, early opened his eyes to the strange gulfs which lie under the crust of society. ' Religion, morals, law, rank, habits ', he says, ' rule over the surface of social life. Streets of magnificent houses are kept clean ; every one outwardly conducts himself with propriety ; but the disorder within is often only the more desolate ; and a polished exterior covers many a wall which totters, and falls with a crash during the night, all the more terrible because it falls during a calm. How many families had I not more or less distinctly known in which bankruptcy, divorce, seduction, murder, and robbery had wrought CHAP, i] The Leipsic Student 49 destruction ! Young as I was, I had often, in such cases, lent my succour ; for as my frankness awakened confidence, and my dis- cretion was known, and as my activity did not shun any sacrifice — indeed, rather preferred the most perilous occasions — I had frequently to mediate, console, and try to avert the storm ; in the course of which I could not help learning many sad and humiliat- ing facts '. It was natural that such sad experience should at first lead him to view the whole social fabric with contempt. To relieve himself he — being then greatly captivated with Moliere's works, — sketched the plans of several dramas, but their plots were so uniformly unpleasant, and the catastrophes so tragic, that he did not work out these plans. ' The Fellow Sinners ' (Die Mitschuldigeti) is the sole piece which was completed, and it now occupies a place among his writings. Few, in England at least, ever read it ; yet it is worth a rapid glance, and is especially remarkable as the work of a youth not yet eighteen. It is lively, and strong with effective situa- tions and two happily sketched characters, — Soller, the scampish husband, and his father-in-law, the inquisitive landlord. The plot is briefly this : Seller's wife — before she became his wife — loved a certain Alcest ; and her husband's conduct is not such as to make her forget her former lover, who, at the opening of the play, is residing in her father's hotel. Alcest prevails upon her to grant him an interview in his own room, while her husband, Soller, is at the masquerade. Unluckily, Soller has determined to rob Alcest that very night. He enters the room by stealth — opens the escri- toire— takes the money — is alarmed by a noise — hides himself in an alcove, and then sees his father-in-law, the landlord, enter the room ! The old man, unable to resist a burning curiosity to know the contents of a letter which Alcest has received that day, has come to read it in secret. But he in turn is alarmed by the ap- pearance of his daughter, and, letting the candle fall, he escapes. Soller is now the exasperated witness of an interview between Alcest and his wife : a situation which, like the whole of the play, is a mixture of the ludicrous and the painful — very dramatic and very unpleasant. On the following day the robbery is discovered. Sophie thinks the robber is her father ; he returns her the compliment — nay, more, stimulated by his eager curiosity, he consents to inform Alcest of his suspicion in return for the permission to read the contents of the mysterious letter. A father sacrificing his daughter E. 50 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n to gratify a paltry curiosity is too gross ; it is the only trait of juvenility in the piece — a piece otherwise prematurely old. En- raged at such an accusation, Sophie retorts the charge upon her father, and some unamiable altercations result. The piece winds up by the self-betrayal of Seller, who, intimating to Alcest that he was present during a certain nocturnal interview, shields himself from punishment. The moral is— ' Forget and forgive among fellow-sinners '. CHAPTER II MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS '"PHE two dramatic works noticed towards the close of the last chapter may be said to begin the real poetic career of their author, because in them he drew from his actual experience. They will furnish us with a text for some remarks on his peculiar characteristics, the distinct recognition of which will facilitate the comprehension of his life and writings. We make a digression, but the reader will find that in thus swerving from the direct path of narrative, we are only tacking to fill our sails with wind. Frederick Schlegel (and after him Coleridge) aptly indicated a distinction, when he said that every man was born either a Plato- nist or an Aristotelian. This distinction is often expressed in the terms subjective and objective intellects. Perhaps we shall best define these by calling the objective intellect one which is emi- nently impersonal^ and the subjective intellect one which is eminently personal ; the former disengaging itself as much as possible from its own prepossessions, striving to see and represent objects as they exist ; the other viewing all objects in the light of its own feelings and preconceptions. It is needless to add that no mind can be exclusively objective, nor exclusively subjective ; but every mind has a more or less dominant tendency in one of these directions. We see the contrast in Philosophy, as in Art. The realist argues from Nature upwards, argues inductively, starting from reality, and never long losing sight of it ; even in the adventurous flights of hypothesis and speculation, being desirous that his hypothesis shall correspond with realities. The idealist argues from an Idea downwards, argues deductively, starting from some conception, and seeking in realities only visible illustrations of a deeper existence. The achievements of CHAP, n] Mental Characteristics 51 modern Science, and the masterpieces of Art, prove that the grandest generalizations and the most elevated types can only be reached by the former method ; and that what is called the ' ideal school', so far from having the superiority which it claims, is only more lofty in its pretensions ; the realist, with more modest pre- tensions, achieves loftier results. The Objective and Subjective, or, as they are also called, the Real and Ideal, are thus contrasted as the termini of two opposite lines of thought. In Philosophy, in Morals, and in Art, we see a constant antagonism between these two principles. Thus in Morals the Platonists are those who seek the highest morality out of human nature, instead of in the healthy development of all human tendencies, and their due co-ordination ; they hope, in the suppression of integral faculties, to attain some superhuman standard. They call that Ideal which no Reality can reach, but for which we should strive. They superpose ab extra, instead of trying to develop ab intra. They draw from their own minds, or from the dogmas handed to them by tradition, an arbitrary mould, into which they attempt to fuse the organic activity of Nature. If this school had not in its favour the imperious instinct of progress, and aspirations after a better, it would not hold its ground. But it satisfies that craving, and thus deludes many minds into acquiescence. The poetic and enthusiastic disposition most readily acquiesces : preferring to overlook what man is, in its delight of contemplating what the poet makes him. To such a mind all conceptions of man must have a halo round them, — half mist, half sunshine ; the hero must be a Demigod, in whom no valet de chambre can find a failing : the villain must be a Demon, for whom no charity can find an excuse. Not to extend this to a dissertation, let me at once say that Goethe belonged to the objective class. ' Everywhere in Goethe ', said Franz Horn, ' you are on firm land or island ; nowhere the infinite sea'. A better characterization was never written in one sentence. In every page of his works may be read a strong feeling for the real, the concrete, the living ; and a repugnance as strong for the vague, the abstract, or the supersensuous. His constant striving was to study Nature, so as to see her directly, and not through the mists of fancy, or through the distortions of prejudice, — to look at men, and into them, — to apprehend things as they were. In his conception of the universe he could not separate God from it, placing Him above it, beyond it, as the 52 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n philosophers did who represented God whirling the universe round His finger, 'seeing it go'. Such a conception revolted him. He animated the universe with God ; he animated fact with divine life ; he saw in Reality the incarnation of the Ideal ; he saw in Morality the high and harmonious action of all human tendencies ; he saw in Art the highest representation of Life. If we look through his works with critical attention, we shall observe the concrete tendency determining — first, his choice of subjects ; secondly, his handling of character ; and, thirdly, his style. Intimately connected with this concreteness is that other char- acteristic of his genius, which determined his creative impulses only in alliance with emotions he himself had experienced. His imagination was not, like that of many others, incessantly at work in the combination and recombination of images, which could be accepted for their own sake, apart from the warrant of preliminary confrontation with fact. It demanded the confrontation ; it moved with ease only on the secure ground of Reality. In like manner we see that in science there are men whose active imaginations carry them into hypothesis and speculation, all the more easily because they do not bring hypothesis to the stern test of fact. The mere delight in combining ideas suffices them ; provided the deductions are logical, they seem almost indifferent to their truth. There are poets of this order ; indeed most poets are of this order. Goethe was of a quite opposite tendency. In him, as in the man of science, an imperious desire for reality controlled the errant facility of imagination. 'The first and last thing demanded of Genius ', he says, ' is love of truth '. Hence we see why he was led to portray men and women instead of demigods and angels : no Posas and Theklas, but Egmonts and Clarchens. Hence also his portraitures carry their moral with them, in them, but have no moral superposed — no accompanying verdict as from some outstanding judge. Further, — and this is a point to be insisted on, — his style, both in poetry and prose, is subject to the same law. It is vivid with pictures, but it has scarcely any imagery. Most poets describe objects by metaphors or comparisons ; Goethe seldom tells you what an object is like, he tells you what it is. Shakespeare is very unlike Goethe in this respect. The prodigal luxuriance of his imagery often entangles, in its overgrowth, the movement of his verse. It is true, he also is eminently concrete : he sees the real object vividly, and he makes us see it vividly ; but he scarcely ever CHAP, n] Mental Characteristics 53 paints it save in the colours of metaphor and simile. Shakespeare's imagery bubbles up like a perpetual spring : to say that it re- peatedly overflows, is only to say that his mind was lured by its own sirens away from the direct path. He did not master his Pegasus at all times, but let the wild careering creature take its winged way. Goethe, on the contrary, always masters his : per- haps because his steed had less of restive life in its veins. Not only does he master it, and ride with calm assured grace : he seems so bent on reaching the goal, that he scarcely thinks of anything else. To quit metaphor, he may be said to use with the utmost sparingness all the aids of imagery, and to create images of the objects, rather than images of what the objects are like. Shakespeare, like Goethe, was a decided realist. He, too, was content to let his pictures of life carry their own moral with them. He uttered no moral verdict ; he was no Chorus preaching on the text of what he pictured. Hence we cannot gather from his works what were his opinions. But there is this difference between him and Goethe, that his intense sympathy with the energetic passions and fierce volitions of our race made him delight in heroic characters, in men of robust frames and im- passioned lives. Goethe, with an infusion of the best blood of Schiller, would have been a Shakespeare ; but, such as Nature made him he was — not Shakespeare. Turning from these abstract considerations to the two earliest works which form our text, we observe how the youth is determined in the choice of his subject by the realistic tendency. Instead of ranging through the enchanted gardens of Armida — instead of throwing himself back into the distant Past, thus escaping from the trammels of a modern subject, which the confrontation of reality always makes more difficult, this boy fashions into verse his own experience, his own observation. He looks into his own heart, — he peers into the byways of civilization, walking with curious observation through squalid streets and dark fearful alleys. Singular, moreover, is the absence of any fierce indignation, any cry of pain at the sight of so much corruption underlying the surface of society. In youth the loss of illusions is generally followed by a cynical misanthropy, or a vehement protest. But Goethe is neither cynical nor indignant. He seems to accept the fact as a thing to be admitted, and quietly striven against, with a view to its amelioration. He seems to think with the younger 54 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n Pliny, that indulgence is a part of justice, and would cite with approval the favourite maxim of the austere yet humane Thraseas, qui -vitia odit homines odit, — he who hates vices hates mankind*. For in the Mitschuldigen he presents us with a set of people whose consolation is to exclaim ' Rogues all ! ' — and in after years he wrote of this piece, that it was dictated, though unconsciously, by 'far-sighted tolerance in the appreciation of moral actions, as expressed in the eminently Christian sentence, Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone '. CHAPTER III ART STUDIES T^RAU BOHME died. In her he lost a monitress and friend, who had kept some check on his waywardness, and drawn him into society. The Professor had long since cooled towards him, after giving up all hopes of making him another Heineccius. It was pitiful. A youth with such remarkable dispositions, who would not be assiduous in attendance at lecture, and whose amusement during lecture was to sketch caricatures of various law dignitaries in his note book : another ornament to jurisprudence irrecoverably lost ! Indeed, the collegiate aspect of this Leipsic residence is not one promising to professors ; but we — instructed by the result — know how much better he was employed, than if he had filled a hundred volumes of note books by diligent attendance at lecture. He studied much, in a desultory manner ; he studied Moliere and Corneille ; he began to translate Le Menteur. The theatre was a perpetual attaction ; and even the uneasy, unsatisfied condition of his affections, was instructing him in directions whither no professor could lead him. But greater than all was the influence of Shakspeare, whom he first learned a little of through Dodd's Beauties of S/ia/csfaiin', a work not much prized in England, where the plays form part of our traditional education, but which must have been a revelation to the Germans, something analogous to what Charles Lamb's Specimens of the Old English Drama was to us. The marvellous strength and beauty of language, the bold and natural imagery of these Beauties, startled the young * PLINY, Rpist., lib. vm, 22. After the text was written, SCHOLL published Goethe's note-book kept at Strasburg, wherein may be read this very aphorism transcribed. It was just the sort of passage to captivate him. CHAP, in] Art Studies 55 poets of that day, like the discovery of huge fossil remains of some antediluvian fauna ; and to gratify the curiosity thus awakened, he says there came Wieland's prose translation of several plays, which he studied with enthusiasm*. There are no materials to fill up the gaps of his narrative here, so that I am forced to leave much indistinct. For instance, he has told us that Kathchen and he were no longer lovers ; but we find him writing to her in a friendly and even lover-like tone from Frankfurt, and we know that friendly intercourse still subsisted between them. Of this, however, not a word occurs in the Autobiography. Nor are we accurately informed how he made the aquaintance of the Breitkopf family. Breitkopf was a bookseller in Leipsic, in whose house Literature and Music were highly prized. Bernhard, the eldest son, was an excellent performer, and composed music to Goethe's songs, which were published in 1769, under this title : Neue Lieder in Melodieen gesetzt von Bernhart Theodor Breitkopf. The poet is not named. This LiederbucK contains twenty songs, the majority of which were subsequently reprinted in the poet's works. They are love songs, and contain a love-philosophy more like what is to be found in Catullus, Horace, and Wieland, than what one would expect from a boy, did we not remember how the braggadocio of youth delights in expressing rout sentiments, as if to give -itself airs of profound experience. This youth sings with gusto of inconstancy : Da fiihl ich die Freuden der wechselden Lust. He gaily declares that if one mistress leaves you another will love you, and the second is sweeter to kiss than the first : Es kiisst sich so siisse der Busen der Zweiten, Als kaum sich der Busen der Ersten gekiisst. Another acquaintance, and one more directly influential, was that of _P_eser, the director of the Drawing Academy. He had been the friend and teacher of Winckelmann, and his name stood high among connoisseurs. Goethe, who at home had learned a little drawing, joined Oeser's class, where, among other fellow-students, was the Hardenberg who afterwards made such a noise in the Prussian political world. He joined the class, and did his best to acquire by labour the skill which only talent can acquire. That he made little progress in drawing, we learn from his * It is possible that Wieland's translation only then fell into Goethe's hands, but the publication was commenced before his arrival in Leipsic, namely, in 1761. 56 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n subsequent confession, no less than from his failure ; but tuition had this effect at least— it taught him to use his eyes. In a future chapter * I shall have occasion to enter more fully on this subject. Enough if for the present a sentence or two from his letters tell us the enthusiasm Oeser inspired. ' What do I not owe to you ', he writes to him, 'for having pointed out to me the way of the True and the Beautiful !' and concludes by saying, 'the undersigned is your work ! ' Writing to a friend of Oeser's, he says that Oeser stands beside Shakspeare and Wieland in the influence exercised over him. ' His instruction will influence my whole life. He it was who taught me that the Ideal of Beauty is Simplicity and Repose, and thence it follows that no youth can be a master'. Instruction in the theory of Art he gained from Oeser, from Winckelmann, and from Laocoon, the incomparable little book which Lessing at this period carelessly flung upon the world. Its effect upon Goethe can only be appreciated by those who early in life have met with this work, and risen from it with minds widened, strengthened, and inspired t. It opened a pathway amid confusion, throwing light upon many of the obscurest problems which tor- ment the artist. It awakened in Goethe an intense yearning to see the works of ancient masters ; and these beckoned from Dresden. To Dresden he went. But here, in spite of Oeser, Winckelmann, and Lessing, in spite of grand phrases about Art, the invincible tendency of his nature asserted itself, and instead of falling into raptures with the great Italian pictures, he confesses that he took their merits upon trust, and was really charmed by none but the landscape and Dutch painters, whose subjects appealed directly to his experience. He did not feel the greatness of Italian Art ; and what he did not feel he would not feign. It is worth noticing that this trip to Dresden was taken in abso- lute secrecy. As, many years later, he stole away to Italy without letting his friends even suspect his project, so now he left Leipsic for Dresden without a word of intimation. Probably the same motive actuated him in both instances. He went to see, to enjoy, to learn, and did not want to be disturbed by personal influence — by other people's opinions. On his return he was active enough with drawing. He made * See Book V, ch. v. t Macaulay told me that the reading of this little book formed an epoch in his mental history, and that he learned more from it than he had ever learned elsewhere. \Laocoon, translated, with Introduction and Notes by Sir Robert Phillimore, Bart., is now obtain- able in Routledge's New Universal Library, is. net.] CHAP, m] Art Studies 57 the acquaintance of an engraver named Stock*, and with his usual propensity to try his hand at whatever his Trends were doing, he forthwith began to learn engraving. In the Morgenblatt for 1828 there is a detailed account of two of his engravings, both repre- senting landscapes with small cascades shut in by rocks and grottoes ; at the foot of each are these words : peint par A. Theile, grav<* par Goethe. One plate is dedicated a Monsieur Goethe, Conseillier actuel de S. M. Impe'riale, par son fils trh obtissant. In the room which they show to strangers in his house in Frank- furt, there is also a specimen of his engraving — very amateurish ; but Madame von Goethe showed me one in her possession which really has merit. Melancholy, wayward, and capricious, ha allowed Lessing to pass through Leipsic without making any attempt to see the man he so much admired : a caprice he afterwards repented, for the opportunity never recurred. Something of his hypochondria was due to mental, but more to physical causes. Dissipation, bad diet (especially the beer and coffee), and absurd endeavours to carry out Rousseau's preaching about returning to a state of nature, had seriously affected his health. The crisis came at last. One summer night (1768) he was seized with violent haemorrhage. He had only strength enough to call to his aid the fellow-student who slept in the next room. Medical assistance promptly came. He was saved ; but his convalescence was embittered by the discovery of a tumour on his neck, which lasted some time. His recovery was slow, but it seemed as if it relieved him from all the peccant humours which had made him hypochondriacal, leaving behind an inward lightness and joyousness to which he had long been a stranger. One thing greatly touched him — the sympathy ex- pressed for him by several eminent men ; a sympathy he felt to be quite undeserved, for there was not one among them whom he had not vexed or affronted by his caprices, extravagances, morbid opposition, and stubborn persistence. One of these friends, Langer, not only made an exchange of books with him, giving a set of Classic authors for a set of German, but also, in devout yet not dogmatic conversation, led his young friend to regard the Bible in another light than that of a merely human composition. ' I loved the Bible and valued it, for it was almost the only book to which I owed my moral culture. Its * This Stock had two amiable daughters, one of whom married (1785) Korner, the correspondent of Schiller, and father of the poet. 58 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n events, dogmas, and symbols were deeply impressed on my mind'. He therefore felt little sympathy with the Deists who were at this time agitating Europe ; and although his tendency was strongly against the Mystics, he was afraid lest the poetical spirit should be swept away along with the prophetical.. In one word, he was in a state of religious doubt — 'destitute of faith, yet terrified at scepticism'. This unrest and this bodily weakness he carried with him, September 1768, from Leipsic to Frankfurt, whither we will follow him. CHAPTER IV RETURN HOME T T E returned home a boy in years, in experience a man. Broken in health, unhappy in mind, with no strong impulses in any one direction, uncertain of himself and of his aims, he felt, as he approached his native city, much like a repentant prodigal, who has no vision of the fatted calf awaiting him. His father, unable to perceive the real progress he had made, was very much alive to the slender prospect of his becoming a distinguished jurist. The fa'thers of poets are seldom gratified with the progress in education visible to them ; and the reason is that they do not know their sons to be poets, nor understand that the poet's orbit is not the same as their own. They tread the common highway on which the mile- stones accurately mark distances ; and seeing that their sons have trudged but little way according to this measurement, their minds are filled with misgivings. Of that silent progress, which consists less in travelling on the broad highway, than in development of the limbs which will make a sturdy traveller, parents cannot judge. Mother and sister, however, touched by the worn face, and, woman-like, more interested in the man than what he had achieved, received him with an affection which compensated for his father's coldness. There is quite a pathetic glimpse given of this domestic interior in the Autobiography, where he alludes to his father's impatience at his illness, and anxiety for his speedy recovery. And we gladly escape from this picture to the letters written from Frankfurt to his old love, Kathchen Schonkopf*. It * Printed in GoctJtes Briefs an seine Leipziger Freunde. Herausgegeben von OTTO JAHN. CHAP, iv] Return Home 59 appears that he left Leipsic without saying adieu. He thus refers to it: ' Apropos, you will forgive me that I did not take leave of you. I was in the neighbourhood, I was even below at the door ; I saw the lamp burning and went to the steps, but I had not the courage to mount. For the last time — how should I have come down again ? ' Thus I now do what I ought to have done then : I thank you for all the love and frendship which you have constantly shown me, and which I shall never forget. I need not beg you to re- member me, — a thousand occasions will arise which must remind you of a man who for two years and a half was part of your family, who indeed often gave you cause for displeasure, but still was always a good lad, and whom it is to be hoped you will often miss ; at least, I often miss you '. The tumour on his neck became alarming : the more so as the surgeons, uncertain about its nature, were wavering in their treat- ment. Frequent cauterization, and constant confinement to his room, were the worst parts of the cure. He read, drew, and etched to wile away the time ; and by the end of the year was pronounced recovered. This letter to Kathchen announces the recovery. ' My best, anxious friend, ' You will doubtless have heard from Horn, on the new year, the news of my recovery ; and I hasten to confirm it. Yes, dear friend, it is over, and in future you must take it quietly, even if you hear — he is laid up again ! You know that my constitution often makes a slip, and in a week gets on its legs again ; this time it was bad, and seemed yet worse than it was, and was attended with terrible pains. Misfortune is also a good. I have learned much in illness which I could have learned nowhere else in life. It is over, and I am quite brisk again, though for three whole weeks I have not left my room, and scarcely any one has visited me but my doctor, who, thank God ! is an amiable man ! An odd thing it is in us men : when I was in lively society I was out of spirits, now I am forsaken by all the world I am cheerful ; for even throughout my illness my cheerfulness has comforted my family, who were not in a condition to comfort themselves, to say nothing of me. The new year's song which you have also received, I composed during an attack of great foolery, and had it printed for the sake of amusement. Besides this, I draw a great deal, write tales, and am contented with myself. God give me, this new year, what is good 60 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n for me ; may He do the same for all of us, and if we pray for nothing more than this, we may certainly hope that He will give it us. If I can only get along till April, I shall easily reconcile myself to my condition. Then I hope things will be better ; in particular my health may make progress daily, because it is now known pre- cisely what is the matter with me. My lungs are as sound as possible, but there is something wrong at the stomach. And, in confidence, I have had hopes given me of a pleasant, enjoyable mode of life, so that my mind is quite cheerful and at rest. As soon as I am better again I shall go away into foreign countries, and it must depend only on you and another person how soon I shall see Leipsic again ; in the meantime I think of going to France to see what French life is, and learn the French language. So you can imagine what a charming man I shall be when I return to you. It often occurs to me, that it would be a laughable affair, if, in spite of all my projects, I were to die before Easter. In that case I would order a gravestone for myself in Leipsic churchyard, that at least every year on St. John's day you might visit the figure of St. John and my grave. What do you think?' To celebrate his recovery, Rath Moritz gave a great party, at which all the Frankfurt friends assembled. In a little while, how- ever, another illness came to lay the poet low ; and, worse than all, there came the news from Leipsic that Kathchen was engaged to a Dr. Kanne, whom Goethe had introduced to her. This for ever decided his restlessness about her. Here is a letter from him. ' My dear, my beloved friend, ' A dream last night has reminded me that I owe you an answer. Not that I had entirely forgotten it, — not that I never think of you : no, my dear friend, every day says something to me of you and of my faults. But it is strange, and it is an experience which perhaps you also know, the remembrance of the absent, though not extinguished by time, is veiled. The distractions of our life, acquaintance with new objects, in short, every change in our circumstances, do to our hearts what smoke and dirt do to a picture, — they make the delicate touches quite undiscernible, and in such a way that one does not know how it comes to pass. A thousand things remind me of you ; I see your image a thousand times, but as faintly, and often with as little emotion, as if I thought of some one quite strange to me ; it often occurs to me that I owe you an answer, without my feeling the slightest impulse CHAP, iv] Return Home 61 to write to you. Now, when I read your kind letter, which is already some months old, and see your friendship and your solicitude for one so unworthy, I am shocked at myself, and for the first time feel what a change has taken place in my heart, that I can be without joy at that which formerly would have lifted me up to heaven. Forgive me this ! Can one blame an unfortunate man because he is unable to rejoice ? My wretchedness has made me dead to the good which still remains to me. My body is restored, but my mind is still uncured. I am in dull, inactive repose ; that is not happiness. And in this quietude my imag- ination is so stagnant, that I can no longer picture to myself what was once dearest to me. It is only in a dream that my heart often appears to me as it is, — only a dream is capable of recalling to me the sweet images, of so recalling them as to reanimate my feelings ; I have already told you that you are indebted to a dream for this letter. I saw you, I was with you ; how it was, is too strange for me to relate to you. In one word, you were married. Is that true? I took up your kind letter, and it agrees with the time ; if it is true, O may that be the beginning of your happiness ! 'When I think of this disinterestedly, how does it rejoice me to know that you, my best friend, you, before every other who envied you and fancied herself better than you, are in the arms of a worthy husband ; to know that you are happy, and freed from every annoyance to which a single state, and especially your single state, was exposed ! I thank my dream that it has vividly depicted your happiness to me, and the happiness of your husband, and his reward for having made you happy. Obtain me his friendship in virtue of your being my friend, for you must have all things in common, even including friends. If I may believe my dream we shall see each other again, but I hope not so very quickly, and for my part I shall try to defer its fulfilment. If, indeed, a man can undertake anything in opposition to destiny. Formerly I wrote to you somewhat enigmatically about what was to become of me. Now I may say more plainly that I am about to change my place of residence, and move farther from you. Nothing will any more remind me of Leipsic, except, perhaps, a restless dream ; no friend who comes from thence ; no letter. And yet I perceive that this will be no help to me. Patience, time, and distance will do that which nothing else can do ; they will annihilate every unpleasant impression, and give us back our 62 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n friendship, with contentment, with life, so after a series of years we may see each other again with altogether different eyes, but with the same heart. Within a quarter of a year you shall have another letter from me, which will tell you of my destination and the time of my departure, and which can once more say to super- fluity what I have already said a thousand times. I entreat you not to answer me any more ; if you have anything more to say to me, let me know it through a friend. That is a melancholy entreaty, my best ! you, the only one of all her sex, whom I cannot call friend, for that is an insignificant title compared with what I feel. I wish not to see your writing again, just as I wish not to hear your voice ; it is painful enough for me that my dreams are so busy. You shall have one more letter ; that promise I will sacredly keep, and so pay a part of my debts ; the rest you must forgive me.' To round off this story, the following extract may be given from the last letter which has been preserved of those he wrote to her. It is dated Frankfurt, January 1770. 'That I live peacefully is all that I can say to you of myself, and vigorously, and healthily, and industriously, for I have no woman in my head. Horn and I are still good friends, but, so it happens in the world, he has his thoughts and ways, and I have my thoughts and ways, and so a week passes and we scarcely see each other once. But, everything considered, I am at last tired of Frankfurt, and at the end of March I shall leave it. I must not yet go to you, I perceive ; for if I came at Easter you could not be married. And Kathchen Schonkopf I will not see again, if I am not to see her otherwise than so. At the end of March, therefore, I go to Strasburg ; if you care to know that, as I believe you do. Will you write to me to Strasburg also ? You will play me no trick. For, Kathchen Schonkopf, now I know perfectly that a letter from you is as dear to me as from any hand in the world. You were always a sweet girl and will be a sweet woman. And I, I shall remain Goethe. You know what that means. If I name my name, I name my whole self, and you know that so long as I have known you I have lived only as part of you'. So fall away the young blossoms of love which have not the force to ripen into fruit. 'The most loveable heart', he writes to Kathchen, with a certain bit of humour, ' is that which loves the most readily; but that which easily loves also easily forgets'. It was his case ; he could not be happy without some one to love ; CHAP, iv] Return Home 63 but his mobile nature soon dried the tears wrung from him by her loss. Turning once more to his domestic condition, we find him in cold, unpleasant relations with his father, who had almost excited the hatred of his other child, Cornelia, by the stern, pedantic, pedagogic way in which he treated her. The old man continued to busy himself with writing his travels in Italy, and with in- structing his daughter. She, who was of a restless, excitable, almost morbid disposition, secretly rebelled against his tyranny, and made her brother the confidant of all her griefs. The poor mother had a terrible time of it, trying to pacify the children, and to stand between them and their father. Very noticeable is one detail recorded by him. He had fallen ill again ; this time with a stomach disorder, which no therapeutic treatment in the power of Frankfurt medicine seemed to mitigate. The family physician was one of those duped dupers who still clung to the great promises of Alchemy. It was whispered that he had in his possession a marvellous panacea, which was only to be employed in times of greatest need, and of which, indeed, no one dared openly speak. Frau Aja, trembling for her son, besought him to employ this mysterious salt. He consented. The patient recovered, and belief in the physician's skill became more complete. Not only was the poet thus restored once more to health, he was also thereby led to the study of Alchemy, and, as he narrates, employed himself in researches after the 'virgin earth '. In the little study of that house in the Hirsch-graben, he collected his glasses and retorts, and following the directions of authorities, sought, for a time, to penetrate the mystery which then seemed so penetrable. It is characteristic of his ardent curiosity and volatility that he should have now devoted the long hours of study to works such as Welling's Opus Mago-cabbalisticum et Theosophicum, and the unintelligible mystifications and diatribes of Paracelsus. He also tried Van Helmont (an interesting though fantastic writer), Basil Valentine, and other Alchemists. These, however, must quickly have been laid aside. They were replaced by the Compendium and the Aphorisms of Boerhaave, who at that period filled Europe with the sound of his name*. Goethe's studies of these writings were valuable as preparations for Faust; * So little can contemporary verdicts settle an author's position, that Boerhaave, whose Institutions were thought worthy of a Commentary in seven quartos by the great Haller, and whose Aphorisms were expanded info five quartos by the illustrious Van Swieten, is now nothing but a name. 64 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n and were not without influence on his subsequent career in science. Renewed intercourse with Fraulein von Klettenberg, together with much theological and philosophical reading, brought Religion into prominence in his thoughts. He has given a sketch of the sort of Neoplatonic Christianity into which his thoughts moulded themselves ; but as this sketch was written so very many years after the period to which it relates, one cannot well accept its authen- ticity. For biographic purposes it is enough to indicate that, besides these Alchemic studies, Religion rose also into serious importance. Poetry seemed quite to have deserted him, although he still occasionally touched up his two plays. In a letter he humorously exposes the worthlessness of the Bardenpoesie, then in fashion among versifiers, who tried to be patriotic and Tyrtsean by huddling together golden helmets, flashing swords, the tramp of horses, and when the verse went lame for want of a syllable, supplying an Oh! or Ha! 'Make me feel', he says, 'what I have not yet felt, — make me think what I have not yet thought, then I will praise you. But shrieks and noise will never supply the place of pathos '. Paoli, the Corsican patriot, passed through Frankfurt at this time, and Goethe saw him in the house of Bethmann, the rich merchant ; but, with this exception, Frankfurt presented nothing remarkable to him, and he was impatient to escape from it. His health was sufficiently restored for his father to hope that now Jurisprudence could be studied with some success ; and Strasburg' was the university selected for that purpose. CHAPTER V STRASBURG TIE reached Strasburg on the 2nd April, 1770. He was now turned twenty, and a more magnificent youth never, perhaps, entered the Strasburg gates. Long before celebrity had fixed all eyes upon him he was likened to an Apollo ; and once, when he entered a dining-room, people laid down their knives and forks to stare at the beautiful youth. Pictures and busts, even when most resembling, give but a feeble indication of that which was most striking in his appearance ;, they give the form of features, but CHAP, v] Strasburg 65 not the play of features ; nor are they very accurate as to the form. His features were large and liberally cut, as in the fine sweeping lines of Greek art. The brow was lofty and massive, and from beneath it shone large lustrous brown eyes of marvellous beauty, their pupils being of almost unexampled size. The slightly aquiline nose was large, and well cut. The mouth was full, with a short, arched upper lip, very sensitive and expressive. The chin and jaw boldly proportioned ; and the head rested on a handsome and muscular neck. In stature he was rather above the middle size ; but although not really tall, he had the aspect of a tall man, and is usually so described, because his presence was very imposing*. His frame was strong, muscular, yet sensitive. Dante says this contrast is in the nature of things, for Quanta la cosa e piu perfetta, Piu senta '1 bene, e cosl la doglienza. Excelling in all active sports, he was almost a barometer in sensi- tiveness to atmospheric influences. Such, externally, was the youth who descended at the hotel sum Geist, in Strasburg, this 2nd April, and who, ridding himself of the dust and ennui of a long imprisonment in the diligence, sallied forth to gaze at the famous Cathedral, which made a wonderful impression on him as he came up to it through the narrow streets. The Strasburg Cathedral not inaptly serves as the symbol of his early German tendencies ; and its glorious tower is always connected, in my mind, with the brief but ardent endeavours of his Hellenic nature to throw itself into the old German world. German his spirit was not, but we shall see him, under the shadow of this tower, for a moment inspired with true German enthusiasm. His lodgings secured — No. 80, on the south side of the Fish- market — he delivered his letters of introduction, and arranged to dine at a table d'hote kept by two maiden ladies, named Lauth, in the Kramergasse, No. 13. The guests here were about ten in number, mostly medical. Their president was Dr. Salzmann, a clean old bachelor of eight and forty, scrupulous in his stockings, immaculate as to his shoes and buckles, with hat under his arm, and. scarcely ever on his head — a neat, dapper old gentleman, * Rauchj the sculptor, who made the well-known statuette of Goethe, explained this to me as owing to his large bust and erect carriage. 66 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n well instructed, and greatly liked by the poet, to whom he gave excellent advice, and for whom he found a valuable repetent*. In spite of the services of this excellent repetent, jurisprudence wearied him considerably, according to his account ; at first, however, he seems to have taken to it with some pleasure, as we learn by a letter, in which he tells Fraulein von Klettenberg a different story: 'Jurisprudence begins to please me very much. Thus it is with all things as with Merseburg beer : the first time we shudder at it, and having drunk it for a week, we cannot do without it'. The study of jurisprudence, at any rate, did not absorb him. Scholl has published a notebook kept during this period, which reveals an astonishing activity in desultory research t. When we remember that the society at his table cPhdte was principally of medical students, we are prepared to find him eagerly throwing himself into the study of anatomy and chemistry. He attended Lobstein's lectures on anatomy, Ehrmann's clinical lectures, with those of his son on midwifery, and Spielman's on chemistry. Electricity occupied him, Franklin's great discovery having brought that subject into prominence. No less than nine works on electricity are set down in the notebook to be studied. We also see from this notebook that chromatic subjects begin to attract him — the future antagonist of Newton was preluding in the science. Alchemy still fascinated him ; and he wrote to Fraulein von Klettenberg, assuring her that these mystical studies were his secret mistresses. With such a direction of his thoughts, and the influence of this pure, pious woman still operating upon him, we can imagine the disgust which followed his study of the Systeme de la Nature, then making so great a noise in the world. This dead and dull exposition of an atheism as superficial as it was dull, must have been everyway revolting to him : irritating to his piety, and unsatisfying to his reason. Voltaire's wit and Rousseau's sarcasms he could copy into his notebook, especially when they pointed in the direction of tolerance ; but he who could read Bayle, Voltaire, and Rousseau with delight, turned from the Sysftme de la Nature with scorn ; especially at a time when we find him taking the sacrament, and trying to keep up an acquaint- * The medical student will best understand what a repetent is, if the word be trans- lated a grinder; the university student, if the word be translated a coach. The repetent prepares students, by an examination, and also by repeating and explaining in private what the professor has taught in the lecture hall. t Briefe und Aufs&tze von Goethe. Herausgegeben von ADOLF SCHOLL. In this, as in his other valuable work, Scholl is not content simply to reprint papers entrusted to him, but enriches them by his own careful, accurate editing. CHAP, v] Strasburg 67 ance with the pious families to which Fraulein von Klettenberg had introduced him. I say trying, because even his goodwill could not long withstand their dulness and narrowness ; he was forced to give them up, and confessed so much to his friend. Shortly after his arrival in Strasburg, namely in May 1770, an event occurred which agitated the town, and gave him an oppor- tunity of seeing, for the first time, Raphael's cartoons. Marie Antoinette, the dauphiness of France elect, was to pass through on her way to Paris. On a small island on the Rhine a building was erected for her reception ; and this was adorned with tapes- tries worked after the cartoons. These tapestries roused his enthusiasm ; but he was shocked to find that they were placed in the side chambers, while the chief salon was hung with tapestries worked after pictures by modern French artists. That Raphael should thus be thrown into a subordinate position was less ex- asperating to him than the subjects chosen from the modern artists. 'These pictures were the history of Jason, Medea, and Creusa — consequently, a story of a most wretched marriage. To the left of the throne was seen the bride struggling against a horrible death, surrounded by persons full of sympathetic grief; to the right stood the father, horror-struck at the murdered babes at his feet ; whilst the fury, in her dragon car, drove through the air'. All the ideas which he had learned from Oeser were outraged by this selection. He did not quarrel so much with the arrange- ment which placed Christ and the Apostles in side chambers, since he had thereby been enabled to enjoy the sight of them. ' But a blunder like that of the grand saloon put me altogether out of my self-possession, and with loud and vehement cries I called to my comrades to witness the insult against feeling and taste. " What ! " I exclaimed, regardless of bystanders, " can they so thoughtlessly place before the eyes of a young queen, on her first setting foot in her dominions, the representation of the most horrible marriage perhaps that ever was consummated ! Is there among the architects and decorators no one man who understands that pictures represent something — that they work upon the mind and feelings — that they produce impressions and excite fore- bodings? It is as if they had sent a ghastly spectre to meet this lovely, and as we hear most joyous, lady at the very frontiers !"' To him, indeed, pictures meant something ; they were realities to him, because he had the true artistic nature. But to the French 68 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n architects, as to the Strasburg officials, pictures were pictures — ornaments betokening more or less luxury and taste, flattering the eye, but never touching the soul. Goethe was right ; and omen-lovers afterwards read in that picture the dark foreshadowing of her destiny. But no one then could have foreseen that her future career would be less triumphant than her journey from Vienna to Paris. That smiling, happy, lovely princess of fifteen, whose grace and beauty extort ex- pressions of admiration from every beholder, as she wends her way along roads lined with the jubilant peasantry leaving their fields to gaze upon her, through streets strewn with nosegays, through triumphal arches, and rows of maidens garlanded, awaiting her arrival to offer her spring-flowers as symbols — can her joy be for a moment dashed by a pictured sorrow? Can omens have a dark significance to her ? ' I still vividly remember ', says Goethe, ' the beauteous and lofty mien, as charming as it was dignified, of the young princess. Plainly visible in her carriage, she seemed to be jesting with her female attendants respecting the throng which poured forth to meet her train'. Scarcely had the news of her happy arrival in the capital reached them, than it was followed by the intelligence of the accident which had disturbed the festivities of her marriage. Goethe's thoughts naturally recurred to the ominous pictures : a nature less superstitious would not have been entirely unmoved by such a coincidence. ' The excitement over, the Strasburgers fell into their accustomed tranquillity. The mighty stream of courtly magnificence had now flowed by, and left me no other longing than that for the tapestries of Raphael, which I could have contemplated and worshipped every hour. Luckily my earnest desires succeeded in interesting several persons of consequence, so that the tapestries were not taken down till the very last moment '. The reestablished quiet left him time for studies again. In a letter of this date, he intimates that he is ' so improved in know- ledge of Greek as almost to read Homer without a translation. I am a week older ; that you know says a great deal with me, not because I do much, but many things '. Among these many things, we must note his ardent search through mystical metaphysical writ- ings for the material on which his insatiable appetite could feed. Strange revelations in this direction are afforded by his Notebook. On one page there is a passage from Thomas a Kempis, followed CHAP, v] Strasburg 69 by a list of mystical works to be read ; on another page, sarcastic sentences from Rousseau and Voltaire ; on a third a reference to Tauler. The book contains an analysis of the Phcedon of Moses Mendelssohn, contrasted with that of Plato ; and a defence of Giordano Bruno against the criticism of Bayle. Apropos of Bruno, one may remark the early tendency of Goethe's mind towards Nature-worship^ Tacitus, indeed, noticed the tendency as national*. The scene in Frankfurt, where the boy-priest erected his Pantheistic altar, will help to explain the interest he must have felt in the glimpse Bayle gave him of the great Pantheist of the sixteenth century — the brilliant and luckless Bruno, who after teaching the heresy of Copernicus at Rome and Oxford, after combating Aristotle and gaining the friendship of Sir Philip Sidney, was publicly burnt on the iyth February, 1600, in the presence of the Roman crowd : expiating thus the crime of teaching that the earth moved, when the Church declared it to be stable. A twofold interest attached itself to the name of Bruno. He was a martyr of Philosophy, and his works were rare ; every one abused him, few had read him. He was almost as much hated as Spinoza, and scarcely any one knew the writings they reviled. The rarity of Bruno's works made them objects of bibliopolic luxury ; some were among the black swans of literature. The Spaccio had been sold for thirty pounds in England, and three hundred florins in Holland. Hamann, whom Herder and Goethe ardently admired, searched Italy and Germany for the Dela Causa and Del Infinite in vain. Forbidden fruit is tempting ; but when the fruit is rare, as well as forbidden, the attraction is irresistiblet. Pantheism, which captivates poetical minds, has a poetical grandeur in the form given to it by Bruno which would have allured Goethe had his tendencies not already lain in that direction. To preach that doctrine Bruno became a homeless wanderer, and his wander- ings ended in martyrdom. Nothing could shake his faith ; as he loftily says, ' con questa filosofia 1'anima mi s'aggrandisce e mi si magnifica 1'intelletto'. Goethe's notes on Bayle's criticism may be given here, as illus- trating his metaphysical opinions and his mastery of French * German., ix, sub fine. What Tacitus there represents as a more exalted creed than anthropomorphism, was really a lower form of religious conception — the Fetichism, which in primitive races precedes Polytheism. _t Since then the works have been made accessible through the cheap and excellent edition collected by A. WAGNER : Opere di Giordano Bruno Nolano. 2 vols. Leipsic : 1830. But I do not observe that, now they are accessible, many persons interest them- selves enough in Bruno to read them ; yet they are worth studying. 70 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n composition. We can be certain of the authenticity of the French : in spite of inaccuracies and inelegancies, it is fluent and expressive, and gives one the idea of greater conversational command of the language than he reports of himself. ' Je ne suis pas du sentiment de M. Bayle a 1'egard de Jor. Brunus, et je ne trouve ni d'impie'td ni d'absurdite" dans les passages qu'il cite, quoique d'ailleurs je ne pre"tende pas d'excuser cet homme paradoxe. " L'uno, Pinfinito, lo ente e quello ch' e in tutto, e per tutto anzi e Mistezzo ubique. E che cosse la infinita dimenzione per non essere magnitudine coincide coll' individuo, come la infinita moltitudine, per non esser numero coincide coll' unita". Giord. Brun. Epist. Ded. del Tratt. de la Causa Principio et Una*. ' Ce passage me"riteroit une explication et une recherche plus philosophiques que le disc, de M. Bayle. II est plus facile de prononcer un passage obscur et contraire a nos notions que de le ddchiffrer, et que de suivre les ide"es d'un grand homme. II est de meme du passage ou il plaisante sur une ide"e de Brunus, que je n'applaudis pas entierement, si peu que les pre"ce"dentes, mais que je crois du moins profondes et peut-etre fdcondes pour un observa- teur judicieux. Notez, je vous prie, de B. une absurdit^ : il dit que ce n'est point 1'etre qui fait qu'il y a beaucoup de choses, mais que cette multitude consiste dans ce qui paroit sur la superfice de la substance '. In the same Notebook there is a remarkable comment on a chapter in Fabricius (Bibliog. Antig.) which Goethe has written in Latin, and which may be thus rendered : ' To discuss God apart from Nature is both difficult and perilous ; it is as if we separated the soul from the body. We know the soul only through the medium of the body, and God only through Nature. Hence the absurdity, as it appears to me, of accusing those of absurdity who philosophically have united God with the world. For everything which exists necessarily pertains to the essence of God, because God is the one Being whose existence includes all things. Nor does the Holy Scripture contradict this, although we differently interpret its dogmas each according to his views. All antiquity thought in the same way ; an unanimity which to me has great significance. To me the judgment of so many men speaks highly * 'The One, the Infinite, the Being, and that which is in all things is everywhere the same. Thus infinite extension not being magnitude coincides with the individual, as infinite multitude because it is not number coincides with unity'. The words in italics are given as in Goethe — carelessly copied for I'istesso and cost. See BRUNO, Opere, i, p. 211, ed. Wagner. CHAP, vj Strasburg 71 for the rationality of the doctrine of emanation ; though I am of no sect, and grieve much that Spinoza should have coupled this pure doctrine with his detestable errors'*. This reference to Spinoza, whom he subsequently reverenced as one of his best teachers, is easily explicable when we reflect that he then knew no more of Spinoza than could be gathered from Bayle. Time was not all consumed by these studies, multifarious as they were. Lively Strasburg had its amusements, and Goethe joined his friend Salzmann in many a pleasant party. The various pleasure grounds and public gardens were always crowded with promenaders, and there the mixture of the old national costume with modern fashions gave charming variety to the scene, and made the pretty women still more attractive. He found himself in the presence of two sharply defined nation- alities. Alsatia, and especially Strasburg, although belonging to France, still preserved its old German character. Eight hundred years of national life were not to be set aside at once, when it pleased the powers, at the peace of Westphalia, to say that Alsatia should be French. Until the middle of the eighteenth century the old German speech, costume, and manners were so dominant that a Frankfurter, or a Mainzer, found himself at once at home there. But just before the outbreak of the French Revolution the gradual influx of officials brought about a sort of fashion in French costume. Milliners, friseurs, and dancing masters had done their best, or their worst, to ' polish ' society. But the surface was rough, and did not take kindly to this polishing. Side by side with the French employ^ there was the old German professor, who obsti- nately declined to acquire more of the foreigners' language than sufficed for daily needs and household matters ; for the rest he kept sturdily Teutonic. Even in costume the imitation was mainly confined to the upper classes t. Goethe describes the maidens of the bourgeoisie still wearing their hair in one long plait, * I subjoin the original, as the reader may not be displeased to see a specimen of Goethe's Latin composition : Separatim de Deo, et natura rerum disserere difficile et pericolosum est, eodem modo quam si de corpore et anima sejunctim cogitamus. Animam nonnisi mediante corpore, Deum nonnisi perspecta natura cognoscimus ; hinc absurdum mihi videtur, eos absurditatis accusare, qui ratiocinations maxime philo- sophica Deum cum mundo conjunxere. Quze enim sunt omnia ad essentiam Dei pertinere necesse est, cum Deus sit unicum existens et omnia comprehendat. Nee Sacer Codex nostrae sentential refragatur, cujus tamen dicta ab unoquoque in sententiam suam torqueri patientur ferimus. Omnis antiquitatis ejusdem fuit sentential, cui con- sensui quam multum tribuo. Testimonio enim mihi est virorum tantorum sentenlia recta: rationi quam convenientissimum fuisse systema emanatiyum, licet nulli subscribere velim sects, valdeque doleam Spinpzismum, teterrimis erroribus ex ^ thoroughly German culture it gave him. In those days culture was mostly classical and French. Classical studies had never exercised much influence over him ; and, indeed, throughout his CHAP, vi] Herder and Frederika 79 career, he approached antiquity more through Art than through the Greek and Roman writers. To the French, on the other hand, he owed a great deal, both of direction and material. A revival of the old German nationality was, however, actively agitated at this epoch. Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Shakespeare, and Ossian were the rivals opposed to France. A feeling of national pride gave its momentum to this change in taste. Gothic art began to be con- sidered the true art of modern times. At the table d'hote our friends, all German, not only banished the French language, but made a point of being in every way unlike the French. French literature was ridiculed as affected, insincere, unnatural. The truth, homely strength, and simplicity of the German character were set against this literature of courtiers. Goethe had been dabbling in mediaeval studies, had been awe- struck by the cathedral, had been inspired by Shakespeare, and had seen Lessing's iconoclastic wit scattering the pretensions of French poetry. Moreover, he had read the biography of Gb'tz von Ber- lichingen, and the picture of that Titan in an age of anarchy had so impressed itself upon him, that the conception of a dramatic reproduction of it had grown up in his mind. Faust also lay there as a germ. The legend of that wonder-worker especially attracted him, now that he was in the condition into which youths so readily fall after a brief and unsatisfactory attempt to penetrate the mysteries of science. ' Like him, too, I had swept the circle of science, and had early learned its vanity ; like him I had trodden various paths, always returning unsatisfied'. The studies of alchemy, medicine, jurisprudence, philosophy, and theology, which had so long engaged him, must have made him feel quite a per- sonal interest in the old Faust legend. In such a mood the acquaintance with Herder was of great importance. Herder was five years his senior, and had already created a name for himself. He came to Strasburg with an eye- disease, which obliged him to remain there the whole winter, during the cure. Goethe, charmed with this new vigorous intellect, at- tended on him during the operation, and sat with him morning and evening during his convalescence, listening to the wisdom which fell from those lips, as a pupil listens to a much-loved master. Great was the contrast between the two men, yet the difference did not separate them. Herder was decided, clear, pedagogic ; know- ing his own aims, and fond of communicating his ideas. Goethe was sceptical and inquiring. Herder rude, sarcastic, and bitter ; 8o Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n Goethe amiable and infinitely tolerant. The bitterness which repelled so many friends from Herder could not repel Goethe : it was a peculiarity of his to be at all times able to learn from antagonistic natures ; meeting them on the common ground of sympathy, he avoided those subjects on which inevitably they must \ clash.7 It is somewhat curious that although Herder took a great ' fiking to his young friend, and was grateful for his kind attentions, he seems to have had little suspicion of his genius. The only frag- ment we have of that period, which gives us a hint of his opinion, is in a letter to his bride, dated February 1772 : ' Goethe is really a good fellow, only somewhat light and sparrow-like*, for which I incessantly reproach him. He was almost the only one who visited me during my illness in Strasburg whom I saw with pleasure ; and I believe I influenced him in more ways than one to his advantage'. His own conceit may have stood between Goethe and himself ; or he may have been too conscious of his young friend's defects to / think much of his genius.; ' Herder, Herder', Goethe writes to him from Strasburg, 'be to me what you are. If I am destined to be your planet, so will I be, and willingly and truly, a friendly moon to your earth. But you must feel that I would rather be Mercury, the last, the smallest of the seven, to revolve with you about the I sun, than the first of the five which turn round Saturn 't. In one of the many inaccuracies of his Autobiography, he says, that he withheld from Herder his intention of writing Gblz ; but there is a passage in Herder's work on German Art, addressed to Goethe, which very plainly alluded to this intention^. Such oversights are inevitable in retracing the minor details of the past. There was indeed contrast enough between the two, in age, char- acter, intellect, and knowledge, to have prevented any very close sympathy. Herder loved the abstract and ideal in men and things, and was for ever criticizing and complaining of the individual, because it did not realize his ideal standard. What Gervinus says of Herder's relation to Lessing, namely, that he loved him when he considered him as a whole, but could never cease plaguing him about details, holds good also of his relation to Goethe through * Nur etwas leicKt unei Spatzenmassig : I translate the phrase, leaving the reader to interpret it, for twenty Germans have given twenty different meanings to the word ' sparrow-like ', some referring to the chattering of sparrows, others to the boldness of sparrows, others to the curiosity of sparrows, and others to the libertine character of sparrows. Whether Herder meant gay, volatile, forward, careless, or amorous, I cannot decide. t A us Herder s Nachlass, I, p. 28. j HERDER : Von deuUchen Art und Kunst, p. 113. CHAP, vi] Herder and Frederika 81 life. Goethe had little of that love of mankind in the abstract which to Herder, and so many others, seems the substitute for individual love, — which animates philanthropists who are sincere in their philanthropy, even when they are bad husbands, bad fathers, bad brothers, and bad friends. He had, instead of this, the most overflowing love for individual men. His concrete and affectionate nature was more attracted to men than to abstractions. It is because many do not recognize this that they declaim against him for his 'indifference' to political matters, to history, and to many of the great questions which affect Humanity. Herder's influence on Goethe was manifold, but mainly in the direction of poetry. He taught him to look at the Bible as a I magnificent illustration of the truth that Poetry is the product of a national spirit, not the privilege of a cultivated few. From the poetry of the Hebrew People he led him to other illustrations of national song ; and here Homer and Ossian were placed highest. It was at this time that Ossian made the tour of Europe, and everywhere met believers. Goethe was so delighted with the wild northern singer, that he translated the song of Se/via, and after- wards incorporated it in Werther. Besides Shakespeare and Ossian, he also learned, through Herder, to appreciate the Vicar of Wakefield; and the exquisite picture there painted, he was now to see living in the parsonage of Frederika's father. Upon the broad and lofty gallery of the Strasburg Cathedral he and his companions often met to salute the setting sun with brimming goblets of Rhine wine. The calm wide landscape stretched itself for miles before them, and they pointed out the several spots which memory endeared to each. One spot, above all others, has interest for us — Sesenheim, the home of fj Frederika. Of all the women who enjoyed the distinction of /I* f '- Goethe's love, none seem to me so fascinating as Frederika. Her idyllic presence is familiar to every lover of German litera- ture, through the charming episode of the Autobiography, over which the poet lingered with peculiar delight. The secretary is now living to whom this episode was dictated, and he remembers vividly how much affected Goethe seemed to be as these scenes revisited memory ; walking up and down the room, with his hands behind him, he often stopped in his walk, and paused in the dicta- tion ; then after a long silence, followed by a deep sigh, he continued the narrative in a lower tone. Weyland, a fellow-boarder, had often spoken of a clergyman G 82 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n who with his wife and two amiable daughters, lived near Drusen- heim, a village about sixteen miles from Strasburg. Early in October 1770, Weyland proposed to his friend to accompany him on a visit to the worthy pastor. It was agreed between them that Weyland should introduce him under the guise of a shabby theo- logical student. His love of incognito often prompted him to such disguises. In the present instance he borrowed some old clothes, and combed his hair in such a way that when Weyland saw him he burst out into a fit of laughter. They set forth in high glee. At Drusenheim they stopped, Weyland to make himself spruce, Goethe to rehearse his part. Riding across the meadows to Sesenheim, they left their horses at the inn, and walked leisurely towards the parsonage, — an old and somewhat dilapidated farm- house, but very picturesque, and very still. They found pastor Brion at home, and were welcomed by him in a friendly manner. The rest of the family were in the fields. Weyland went after them, leaving Goethe to discuss parish interests with the pastor, who soon grew confidential. Presently the wife appeared ; and she was followed by the eldest daughter bouncing into the room, in- quiring after Frederika, and hurrying away again to seek her. Refreshments were brought, and old acquaintances were talked over with Weyland, — Goethe listening. Then the daughter re- turned, uneasy at not having found Frederika. This little domestic fuss about Frederika prepared the poet for her appearance. At length she came in. Both girls wore the national costume, with its short, white, full skirt and furbelow, not concealing the neatest of ankles, a tight bodice and black taffeta apron. Frederika's straw hat hung on her arm ; and the beautiful braids of her fair hair drooped on a delicate white neck. Merry blue eyes, and a piquant little nez retrousst, completed her attractions. In gazing on this bright young creature, then only sixteen, Goethe felt ashamed of his disguise. It hurt his amour-propre to appear thus before her like a bookish student, shorn of all personal advantages. Meanwhile conversation rattled on between Weyland and his family. Endless was the list of uncles, aunts, nieces, cousins, gossips, and guests they had something to say about, leaving him completely excluded from the conversation. Frederika seeing this, seated herself by him, and with charming frankness began to talk to him. Music was lying on the harpischord ; she asked him if he played, and on his modestly qualified affirmative begged him < to favour them '. Her father, however, suggested that she ought CHAP, vi] Herder and Frederika 83 to begin, by a song. She sat down to the harpsichord, which was somewhat out of tune, and, in a provincial style, performed several pieces, such as then were thought enchanting. After this she began to sing. The song was tender and melancholy, but she was apparently not in the mood, for acknowledging her failure she rose and said, ' If I sing badly it is not the fault of my harpsichord nor of my teacher : let us go into the open air, and then you shall hear my Alsatian and Swiss songs'. Into the air they went, and soon her merry voice carolled forth : ' I come from a forest as dark as the night, And believe me, I love thee, my only delight. Ei ja, ei ja, ei, ei, ei, ei, ja, ja, ja ! ' * He was already a captive. His tendency to see pictures and poetry in the actual scenes of life, here made him see realized the Wakefield family. If pastor. Brion did not accurately represent Mr. Primrose, yet he might stand for him ; the elder daughter for Olivia, the younger for Sophia ; and when at supper a youth came into the room, Goethe involuntarily exclaimed ' What, Moses too ! ' A very merry supper they had ; so merry that Weyland, fearing lest wine and Frederika should make his friend betray himself, proposed a walk in the moonlight. Weyland offered his arm to Salome, the elder daughter (always named Olivia in the Autobiography), Frederika took Goethe's arm. Youth and moonlight — need one say more ? Already he began to scrutinize her tone in speaking of cousins and neighbours, jealous lest it should betray an affection. But her blithe spirit was as yet untroubled, and he listened in delicious silence to her unembarrassed loquacity. On retiring for the night the friends had much to talk over. Weyland assured him the incognito had not been betrayed ; on the contrary, the family had inquired after the young Goethe, of whose joviality and eccentricities they had often heard. And now came the tremulous question : was Frederika engaged ? No. That was a relief! Had she ever been in love? No. Still better ! Thus chatting, they sat till deep in the night, as friends chat on such occasions, with hearts too full and brains too heated for repose. At dawn Goethe was awake, impatient to see Frederika with the dew of morning on her cheek. While dressing he looked * The entire song is to be found in the Sesenheimer Liedtrlruch and in Viehoff: Goethe Erl&utert, vol. I, p. no. 84 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n at his costume in disgust, and tried in vain to remedy it. His hair could be managed ; but when his arms were thrust into his threadbare coat, the sleeves of which were ludicrously short, he looked pitiable ; Weyland, peeping at him from under the coverlet, giggled. In his despair he resolved to ride back to Strasburg, and return in his own costume. On the way another plan sug- gested itself. He exchanged clothes with the son of the landlord at the Drusenheim Inn, a youth of his own size ; corked his eye- brows, imitated the son's gait and speech, and returned to the parsonage the bearer of a cake. This second disguise also succeeded, so long as he kept at a distance ; but Frederika running up to him and saying, 'George, what do you here?' he was forced to reveal himself. ' Not George, but one who asks forgiveness '. ' You shocking creature ! ' she exclaimed, ' how you frightened me ! ' The jest was soon explained and forgiven, not only by Frederika, but by the family, who laughed heartily at it. Gaily passed the day ; the two hourly falling deeper and deeper in love. Passion does not chronicle by time : moments are hours, hours years, when two hearts are rushing into one. It matters little, therefore, that the Autobiography speaks of only two days passed in this happy circle, whereas a letter of his says distinctly he was there ' some days — einige Tage ' (less than three cannot be understood by einige}. He was there long enough to fall in love, and to captivate the whole family by his gaiety, obligingness, and poetic gifts. He had given them a taste of his quality as a romancist, by telling the story of The New Melusina (subsequently published in the Wanderjahre). He had also interested himself in the pastor's plans for the rebuilding of the parsonage, and proposed to take away the sketches with him to Strasburg. The pain of separation was lightened by the promise of speedy reunion. He returned to Strasburg with new life in his heart. He had not long before written to a friend that for the first time he knew what it was to be happy without his heart being engaged. Pleasant people and manifold studies left him no time for feeling. ( Enough, my present life is like a sledge journey, splendid and sounding, but with just as little for the heart as it has much for eyes and ears'. Another tone runs through his letters now, to judge from the only one which has been recovered*. It is addressed to Frederika, dated the I5th October. * SCHOLL, Briefe und A ufsatze, p. 51. The letters in Pfeiffer's book are manifest forgeries. CHAP, vi] Herder and Frederika 85 ' Dear new friend, ' I dare to call you so ; for if I can trust the language of eyes, then did mine in the first glance read the hope of this new friend- ship in yours— and for our hearts I will answer. You, good and gentle as I know you, will you not show some favour to one who loves you so ? ' Dear, dear friend, ' That I have something to say to you there can be no question ; but it is quite another matter whether I exactly know wherefore I now write, and what I may write. Thus much I am conscious of by a certain inward unrest : that I would gladly be by your side, and a scrap of paper is as true a consolation and as winged a steed for me here in noisy Strasburg, as it can be to you in your quiet, if you truly feel the separation from your friend. ' The circumstances of our journey home you can easily imagine, if you marked my pain at parting, and how I longed to remain behind. Weyland's thoughts went forwards, mine backwards ; so you can understand how our conversation was neither interesting nor copious. 'At the end of the Wanzenau we thought to shorten our route, and found ourselves in the midst of a morass. Night came on ; and we only needed the storm which threatened to overtake us, to have had every reason for being fully convinced of the love and constancy of our princesses*. ' Meanwhile, the scroll which I held constantly in my hand — fearful of losing it — was a talisman, which charmed away all the perils of the journey. And now ? — Oh I dare not utter it — either you can guess it, or you will not believe it ! 'At last we arrived, and our first thought, which had been our joy on the road, was the project soon to see you again. ' How delicious a sensation is the hope of seeing again those we love ! And we, when our coddled heart is a little sorrowful, at once bring it medicine and say : Dear little heart, be quiet, you will not long be away from her you love ; be quiet, dear little heart ! Meanwhile we give it a chimera to play with, and then is it good and still as a child to whom the mother gives a doll instead of the apple which it must not eat. ' Enough, we are not here, and so you see you are wrong. You would not believe that the noisy gaiety of Strasburg would be * An allusion doubtless intelligible to the person addressed, but I can make nothing of it. 86 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n disagreeable to me after the sweet country pleasures enjoyed with you. Never, Mamsell, did Strasburg seem so empty to me as now. I hope, indeed, it will be better when the remembrance of those charming hours is a little dimmed — when I no longer feel so vividly how good, how amiable my friend is. Yet ought I to forget that, or to wish it? No; I will rather retain a little sorrow and write to you frequently. 'And now many, many thanks and many sincere remembrances to your dear parents. To your dear sister many hundred . . . what I would so willingly give you again ! ' A few days after his return, Herder underwent the operation previously alluded to. Goethe was constantly with him ; but as he carefully concealed all his mystical studies, fearing to have them ridiculed, so one may suppose he concealed also the new passion which deliciously tormented him. In silence he occupied himself with Frederika, and carefully sketched plans for the new parson- age. He sent her books, and received from her a letter, which of course seemed priceless. In November he was again at Sesenheim. Night had already set in when he arrived ; his impatience would not suffer him to wait till morning, the more so as the landlord assured him the young ladies had only just gone home, where 'they expected some one'. He felt jealous of this expected friend; and he hastened to the parsonage. Great was his surprise to find them not surprised ; greater still to hear Frederika whisper ' Did I not say so ? Here he is ! ' Her loving heart had prophesied his coming, and had named the very day. The next day was Sunday, and many guests were expected. Early in the morning Frederika proposed a walk with him, leaving her mother and sister to look after domestic preparations. Who shall describe that walk, wherein the youthful pair abandoned themselves without concealment to all the delightful nothings of commencing love? They talked over the expected pleasures of the day, and arranged how to be always together. She taught him several games ; he taught her others ; and underneath these inno- cent arrangements, Love serenely smiled. The church bell called them from their walk. To church they went, and listened — not very attentively — to the worthy pastor. Another kind of devo- tion made their hearts devout. He meditated on her charming qualities, and as his glance rested on her ruddy lips, he recalled the last time woman's lips had been pressed to his own ; recalled the CHAP, vi] Herder and Frederika 87 curse which the excited French girl had uttered, a curse which hitherto had acted like a spell. This superstition not a little troubled him in games of forfeits, where kisses always form a large proportion ; and his presence of mind was often tried in the attempts to evade them ; the more so as many of the guests, suspecting the tender relation between him and Frederika, sportively took every occasion to make them kiss. She, with natural instinct, aided him in his evasions. The time came, however, when, carried away by the excitement of the dance and games, he felt the burning pressure of her lips crush the superstition in a Kiss, a long, long kiss Of youth and beauty gathered into one. He returned to Strasburg, if not a formally betrothed, yet an accepted lover. As such the family and friends seem to have re- garded him. Probably no betrothal took place, on account of his youth, and the necessity of obtaining his father's consent. His muse, lately silent, now found voice again, and several of the poems Frederika inspired are to be read in his published works*. He had been sent to Strasburg to gain a doctor's degree. His Dissertation had been commenced just before this Sesenheim episode. But Shakespeare, Ossian, Faust, Gbtz, and, above alL Frederika, scattered his plans, and he followed the advice of friends to choose, instead of a Dissertation, a number of Theses, upon which to hold a disputation. His father would not hear of such a thing, but demanded a regular Dissertation. He chose, therefore, this theme, ' That it is the duty of every law-maker to establish a certain religious "worship binding itpon clergy and laity '. A theme he supported by historical and philosophical arguments. The Dissertation was written in Latin, and sent to his father, who received it with pleasure. But the dean of the faculty would not receive it — either because its contents were paradoxical, or because it was not sufficiently erudite. In lieu thereof he was permitted to choose Theses for disputation. The Disputation was held on the 6th of August 1771, his opponent being Franz Lerse, who pressed him hard. A jovial schmaus, a real students' banquet, crowned this promotion of Dr. Goetfiet. * The whole have been reprinted in the Sesenheimer Liederbuch; and in VIEHOFF'S Goethe Erlantert. t There is some obscurity on this point. From a letter to Salzmann, it seems he only got a licentiate degree at this time. The doctorate he certainly had ; but when his diploma was prepared is not known. 8$ Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n He could find no time for visits to Sesenheim during this active preparation for his doctorate ; but he was not entirely separated from Frederika : her mother had come with both daughters to Strasburg, on a visit to a rich relative. He had been for some time acquainted with this family, and had many opportunities of meeting his beloved. The girls, who came in their Alsatian costume, found their cousins and friends dressed like French- women ; a contrast which greatly vexed Olivia, who felt ' like a maidservant' among these fashionable friends. Her restless man- ners evidently made Goethe somewhat ashamed of her. Frederika, on the other hand, though equally out of her element in this society, was more self-possessed, and perfectly contented so long as he was by her side. There is in the Autobiography a significant phrase : this visit of the family is called a ' peculiar test of his love'. And test it was, as every one must see who considers the relations in which the lovers stood. He was the son of an im- portant Frankfurt citizen, and held almost the position of a noble- man in relation to the poor pastor's daughter. Indeed, the social disparity was so great, that many explain his not marrying Fred- erika on the ground of such a match being impossible, — 'his father ', it is said, ' would not have listened to such a thing for a moment'. Love in nowise troubles itself about station, never asks 'what will the world say?' but there is quite a different solicitude felt by Love when approaching Marriage. In the first eagerness of passion, a prince may blindly pursue a peasant ; but when his love is gratified by return, when reflection reasserts its duties, then the prince will consider what in other minds will be the estimation of his mistress. Men are very sensitive to the opinions of others on their mistresses and wives ; and Goethe's love must indeed have been put to the test, at seeing Frederika and her sister thus in glaring contrast with the society in which he moved. In the groves of Sesenheim she was a wood-nymph ; but in Strasburg salons the wood-nymph seemed a peasant. Who is there that has not experienced a similar destruction of illusion, in seeing an ad- mired person lose almost all charm in the change of environment? Frederika laid her sweet commands on him one evening, and bade him entertain the company by reading Hamlet aloud. He did so, to the great enjoyment of all, especially Frederika, 'who from time to time sighed deeply, and a passing colour tinged her cheeks'. Was she thinking of poor Ophelia— placing herself in that forlorn position ? CHAP, vi] Herder and Frederika 89 For Hamlet and the trifling of his favour, Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood ! She may have had some presentiment of her fate. The applause, however, which her lover gained was proudly accepted by her, 'and in her graceful manner she did not deny herself the little pride of having shone through him'. It is quite certain that his passion gave him vague uneasiness. 'How happy is he', he writes, 'whose heart is light and free! Courage urges us to confront difficulties and dangers, and only by great labour are great joys obtained. That, perhaps, is the worst I have to allege against love. They say it gives courage : never ! The heart that loves is weak. When it beats wildly in the bosom, and tears fill our eyes, and we sit in an inconceivable rapture as they flow — then, oh ! then, we are so weak, that flower-chains bind us, not because they have the strength of any magic, but because we tremble lest we break them '. The mention of Hamlet leads us naturally into the society where he sought oblivion, when Frederika quitted Strasburg. Her departure, he confesses, was a relief to him. She herself felt on leaving that the end of their romance was approaching. He plunged into gaiety to drown tormenting thoughts. ' If you could but see me ', he wrote to Salzmann, after describing a dance which had made him forget his fever : ' my whole being was sunk in dancing. And yet could I but say : I am happy ; that would be better than all. "Who is't can say I am at the worse?" says Edgar (in Lear). That is some comfort, dear friend. My heart is like a weathercock when a storm is rising, and the gusts are changeable '. Some days later he wrote : ' All is not clear in my soul. I am too curiously awake not to feel that I grasp at shadows. And yet . . . To-morrow at seven my horse is saddled, and then adieu ! ' Besides striving to drown in gaiety these tormenting thoughts, he also strove to divert them into channels of nobler activity ; stimulated thereto by the Shakespearean fanaticism of his new friend Lenz. Reinhold Lenz, irrevocably forgotten as a poet, whom a vain effort on the part of Gruppe has tried to bring once more into public favour*, is not without interest to the student of German literature during the Sturm iind Drang period. He came to * GRUPPE: Rtinhold Lent Leben und Wtrke: 1861. 90 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n Strasburg in 1770, accompanying two young noblemen as their tutor, and mingling with them in the best society of the place ; and, by means of Salzmann, was introduced to the Club. Al- though he had commenced by translating Pope's Essay on Criticism, he was, in the strictest sense of the word, one of the Shakespeare bigots, who held to the severest orthodoxy in Shake- speare as a first article of their creed, and who not only main- tained the Shakespeare clowns to be incomparable, but strove to imitate them in their language. Many an entravagant jest, and many an earnest discussion served to vary the hours. It is not easy for us to imagine the effect which the revelation of such a mind as Shakespeare's must have produced on the young Germans. His colossal strength, profundity of thought, originality and audacity of language, his beauty, pathos, sublimity, wit, and wild overflowing humour, and his accuracy of observation as well as depth of insight into the mysteries of passion and character, were qualities which no false criticism, and, above all, no national taste, prevented Germans from appreciating. It was very different in France. There an established form of art, with which national pride was identified, and an established set of critical rules, upon which Taste securely rested, necessarily made Shakespeare appear like a Cyclops of Genius — a monster, though of superhuman proportions. Frenchmen could not help being shocked at many things in Shakespeare ; yet even those who were most outraged, were also most amazed at the pearls to be found upon the dung- hill. In Germany the pearls alone were seen. French taste had been pitilessly ridiculed by Lessing. The French Tragedy had been contrasted with Shakespeare, and pronounced unworthy of comparison. To the Germans, therefore, Shakespeare was a standard borne by all who combated against France, and his greatness was recognized with something of wilful preference. The state of German literature also rendered his influence the more prodigious. Had Shakespeare been first revealed to us when Mr. Hayley was the great laureate of the age, we should have felt something of the eagerness with which the young and ardent minds of Germany received this greatest poet of all ages. I am fortunately enabled, thanks to Otto Jahn, to give here a very interesting illustration of the enthusiasm with which these young men studied Shakespeare ; and among the new materials this Biography contains, perhaps nothing will be so welcome in CHAP, vi] Herder and Frederika 91 England. It is an oration prepared by Goethe for one of the meetings of the Shakespeare-circle before mentioned. To hear the youth of one-and-twenty thus eloquent on his great idol, lets us intimately into the secret of his mental condition. ORATION ON SHAKESPEARE. ' In my opinion, the noblest of our sentiments is the hope of continuing to live, even when destiny seems to have carried us back into the common lot of non-existence. This life, gentlemen, is much too short for our souls ; the proof is, that every man, the lowest as well as the highest, the most incapable as well as the most meritorious, will be tired of anything sooner than of life, and that no one reaches the goal towards which he set out ; for how- ever long a man may be prosperous in his career, still at last, and often when in sight of the hoped-for object, he falls into a grave, which God knows who dug for him, and is reckoned as nothing. Reckoned as nothing ? I ? who am everything to myself, since I know things only through myself ! So cries every one who is truly conscious of himself; and makes great strides through this life — a preparation for the unending course above. Each, it is true, according to his measure. If one sets out with the sturdiest walking pace, the other wears seven-leagued boots and outstrips him ; two steps of the latter are equal to a day's journey of the former. Be it as it may with him of the seven-leagued boots, this diligent traveller remains our friend and our companion, while we are amazed at the gigantic steps of the other and admire them, follow his footsteps and measure them with our own. ' Let us up and be going, gentlemen ! To watch a solitary march like this enlarges and animates our souls more than to stare at the thousand footsteps of a royal procession. To-day we honour the memory of the greatest traveller on this journey of life, and thereby we are doing an honour to ourselves. When we know how to appreciate a merit we have the germ of it within ourselves. Do not expect that I should say much or methodically ; mental calmness is no garment for a festival ; and as yet I have thought little upon Shakespeare ; to have glimpses, and, in exalted passages, to feel, is the utmost I have been able to obtain. The first page of his that I read made me his for life : and when I had finished a single play, I stood like one born blind, on whom a miraculous hand bestows sight in a moment. I saw, I felt, in the most vivid 1 manner, that my existence was infinitely expanded, everything was '• 92 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK, n now unknown to me, and the unwonted light pained my eyes. By little and little I learned to see, and, thanks to my receptive genius, I continue vividly to feel what I have won. I did not hesitate for a moment about renouncing the classical drama. The unity of place seemed to me irksome as a prison, the unities of action and of time burthensome ' fetters to our imagination ; I sprang into the open air, and felt for the first time that I had hands and feet. And now that I see how much injury the men of rule did me in their dungeon, and how many free souls still crouch there, my heart would burst if I did not declare war against them, and did not seek daily to batter down their towers. ' The Greek drama, which the French took as their model, was both in its inward and outward character such, that it would be easier for a marquis to imitate Alcibiades than for Corneille to follow Sophocles. At first an intermezzo of divine worship, then a mode of political celebration, the tragedy presented to the people great isolated actions of their fathers with the pure simplicity of perfection ; it stirred thorough and great emotions in souls because it was itself thorough and great. And in what souls ? Greek souls ! I cannot explain to myself what that expresses, but I feel it, and appeal for the sake of brevity to Homer and Sophocles, and Theo- critus ; they have taught me to feel it. ' Now hereupon I immediately ask : Frenchman, what wilt thou do with the Greek armour ? it is too strong and too heavy for thee. ' Hence, also, French tragedies are parodies of themselves. How regularly everything goes forward, and how they are as like each other as shoes, and tiresome withal, especially in the fourth act, — all this, gentlemen, you know from experience, and I say nothing about it. ' Who it was that first thought of bringing great political actions on the stage I know not ; this is a subject which affords an oppor- tunity to the amateur for a critical treatise. I doubt whether the honour of the invention belongs to Shakespeare ; it is enough that he brought this species of drama to the pitch which still remains the highest, for few eyes can reach it and thus it is scarcely to be hoped that any one will see beyond it or ascend above it. Shak- peare, my friend ! if thou wert yet amongst us, I could live no- where but with thee ; how gladly would I play the subordinate character of a Pylades, if thou wert Orestes ; yes, rather than be a venerated highpriest in the temple of Delphos. ' I will break off, gentlemen, and write more to-morrow, for I CHAP, vi] Herder and Frederika 93 am in a strain which, perhaps, is not so edifying to you as it is heartfelt by me. 'Shakespeare's dramas are a beautiful casket of rarities, in which the history of the world passes before our eyes on the invisible thread of time. His plots, to speak according to the ordinary style, are no plots, for his plays all turn upon the hidden point (which no philosopher has yet seen and defined), in which the peculiarity of our ego, the pretended freedom of our will, clashes with the necessary course of the whole. But our corrupt taste so beclouds our eyes, that we almost need a new creation to extricate us from this darkness. 'All French writers, and Germans infected with French taste, even Wieland, have in this matter, as in several others, done them- selves little credit. Voltaire, who from the first made a profession of vilifying everything majestic, has here also shown himself a genuine Thersites. If I were Ulysses, his back should writhe under my sceptre. Most of these critics object especially to Shakespeare's characters. And I cry, nature, nature ! nothing so natural as Shakespeare's men. ' There I have them all by the neck. Give me air that I may speak ! He rivalled Prometheus, and formed his men feature by feature, only of colossal size; therein lies the reason that we do not recognize our brethren ; and then he animated them with the breath of his mind ; he speaks in all of them, and we perceive their relationship. ' And how shall our age form a judgment as to what is natural ? Whence can we be supposed to know nature, we who, from youth upwards, feel everything within us, and see everything in others, laced up and decorated ? I am often ashamed before Shakespeare, for it often happens that at the first glance I think to myself I should have done that differently ; but soon I perceive that I am a poor sinner, that nature prophesies through Shakespeare, and that my men are soap-bubbles blown from romantic fancies. 'And now to conclude, — though I have not yet begun. What noble philosophers have said of the world, applies also to Shake- speare ; — namely, that what we call evil is only the other side, and belongs as necessarily to its existence and to the Whole, as the torrid zone must burn and Lapland freeze, in order that there may be a temperate region. He leads us through the whole world, but we, enervated, inexperienced men, cry at every strange grasshopper that meets us : He will devour us. 94 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n ' Up, gentlemen ! sound the alarm to all noble souls who are in the elysium of so-called good taste, where drowsy in tedious twilight they are half alive, half not alive, with passions in their hearts and no marrow in their bones ; and because they are not tired enough to sleep, and yet are too idle to be active, loiter and yawn away their shadowy life between myrtle and laurel bushes '. In these accents we hear the voice of the youth who wrote Gotz with the Iron Hand. If the reader turn to the Autobiography and see there what is said of Shakespeare, he will be able to appreciate what I meant in saying that the tone of the Auto- biography is unlike the reality. The tone of this speech is that of the famous Sturm und Drang (storm and stress) period, which in after life became so very objectionable to him. How differently Schiller was affected by Shakespeare may be read in the following confession : ' When at an early age I first grew acquainted with this poet, I was indignant at his coldness — indignant with the insensibility which allowed him to jest and sport amidst the highest pathos. Led by my knowledge of more modern poets to seek the poet in his works ; to meet and sympathize with his heart ; to reflect with him over his object ; it was insufferable to me that this poet gave me nothing of himself. Many years had he my reverence — certainly my earnest study, before I could comprehend his individuality. I was not yet fit to comprehend nature at first hand '. The enthusiasm for Shakespeare naturally incited Goethe to dramatic composition, and, besides Gotz and Faust before men- tioned, we find in his Notebook the commencement of a drama on Julius Ccesar. Three forms rise up from out the many influences of Strasburg into distinct and memorable importance : Frederika ; Herder ; the Cathedral. An exquisite woman, a noble thinker, and a splendid monument, were his guides into the regions of Passion, Poetry, and Art. The influence of the Cathedral was great enough to make him write the little tractate on German archi- tecture D. M. Erwini a Steinbach; the enthusiasm of which was so incomprehensible to him in after years, that he was with difficulty persuaded to reprint the tractate among his works. Do we not see here — as in so many other traits — how different the youth is from the child and man ? How thoroughly he had entered into the spirit of Gothic archi- tecture is indicated by the following anecdote. In company with CHAP, vi] Herder and Frederika 95 some friends he was admiring the Strasburg Cathedral, when one remarked, ' What a pity it was not finished, and that there should be only one steeple '. Upon this he answered, ' It is a matter of equal regret to me to see this solitary steeple unfinished ; the four spiral staircases leave off too abruptly at the top ; they ought to have been surmounted by four light pinnacles, with a higher one rising in the centre instead of the clumsy mass'. Some one, turning round to him, asked him who told him that? 'The tower itself, he answered ; ' I have studied it so long, so attentively, and with so much love, that at last it has confessed to me its open secret'. Whereupon his questioner informed him that the tower had spoken truly, and offered to show him the original sketches, which still existed among the archives. Inasmuch as in England many professed admirers of architec- ture appear imperfectly acquainted with the revival of the taste for Gothic art, it may not be superfluous to call attention to the fact that Goethe was among the very first to recognize the peculiar beauty of that style, at a period when classical, or pseudo-classical, taste was everywhere dominant. It appears that he was in friendly correspondence with Sulpiz Boisserde, the artist who made the restored design of Cologne Cathedral ; from whom he doubtless learned much. And we see by the Wahlver-wandtschaften that he had a portfolio of designs illustrative of the principle of the pointed style. This was in 1 809, when scarcely any one thought of the Gothic ; long before Victor Hugo had written his Notre Dame de Paris; long before Pugin and Ruskin had thrown their impassioned energy into this revival ; at a time when the church in Langham Place was thought beautiful, and the Temple Church was considered an eyesore. And now he was to leave Strasburg, — to leave Frederika. Much as her presence had troubled him of late, in her absence he only thought of her fascinations. He had not ceased to love her, although he already felt she never would be his. He went to say adieu. ' Those were painful days, of which I remember nothing. When I held out my hand to her from my horse, the tears were in her eyes, and I felt sad at heart. As I rode along the footpath to Drusenheim a strange phantasy took hold of me. I saw in my mind's eye my own figure riding towards me, attired in a dress I had never worn — pike grey with gold lace. I shook off this phantasy, but eight years afterwards I found myself on the very road, going to visit Frederika, and that too in the very dress which 96 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK n I had seen myself in, in this phantasm, although my wearing it was quite accidental'. The reader will probably be somewhat sceptical respecting the dress, and will suppose that this prophetic detail was afterwards transferred to the vision by the imagination of later years*. And so farewell, Frederika, bright and exquisite vision of a poet's youth ! We love you, pity you, and think how differently we should have treated you ! We make pilgrimages to Sesenheim as to Vaucluse, and write legibly our names in the Visitors' Album, to testify so much. And we read, not without emotion, narratives such as that of the worthy philologist Nake, who in 1822 made the first pilgrimaget, thinking, as he went, of this enchanting Frederika (and somewhat also of a private Frederika of his own), examined every rood of the ground, dined meditatively at the inn (with a passing reflection that the bill was larger than he antici- pated), took coffee with the pastor's successor ; and, with a sentiment touching in a philologist, bore away a sprig of the jessamine which in days gone by had been tended by the white hands of Frederika, and placed it in his pocket-book as an imperishable souvenir. * The correspondence with the Frau von Stein contains a letter written by him a day or two after this visit, but, singularly enough, no mention of this coincidence, t Die Wahlfahrt nach Sesenheim. BOOK THE THIRD 1771 to 1775 CHAPTER I DR. GOETHE'S RETURN /^vN the 25th or 28th of August 1771, he quitted Strasburg. His ^>^ way led through Mannheim ; and there he was first thrilled by the beauty of ancient masterpieces, some of which he saw in plaster cast. Whatever might be his predilection for Gothic Art, he could not view these casts without feeling himself in presence of an Art in its way also divine ; and his previous study of Lessing lent a peculiar interest to the Laocoon group, now before his eyes. Passing on to Mainz, he fell in with a young wandering harpist, and invited the ragged minstrel to Frankfurt, promising him a public in the Fair and a lodging in his father's house. It was lucky that he thought of acquainting his mother with this invita- tion. Alarmed at its imprudence, she secured a lodging in the town, and so the boy wanted neither shelter nor patronage. Rath Goethe was not a little proud of the young Doctor. He was also not a little disturbed by the young Doctor's manners ; and often shook his ancient respectable head at the opinions which exploded like bombshells in the midst of conventions. Doctoral gravity was but slightly attended to by this young hero of the Sturm und Drang. The revolutionary movement known by the title of the Storm and Stress was then about to astonish Germany, and to startle all conventions, by works such as Gerstenberg's Ugolino, Goethe's Gotz von Berlichingen, and Klinger's Sturm und Drang (from whence the name). The wisdom and extrava- gance of that age united in one stream : the masterly criticisms of Lessing, — the enthusiasm for Shakespeare, — the mania for Ossian and the northern mythology, — the revival of ballad literature, — and imitations of Rousseau, all worked in one rebellious current against established authority. There was one universal shout for K 97 98 Life and Works of Goethe [BOOK in Nature. With the young, Nature seemed to be a compound of volcanoes and moonlight ; her force explosion, her beauty senti- ment. To be insurgent and sentimental, explosive and lachry- mose, were the true signs of genius. Everything established was humdrum. Genius, abhorrent of humdrum, would neither spell correctly, nor write correctly, nor demean itself correctly. It would be German— lawless, rude, and natural. Lawless it was, and rude it was, but not natural, according to the nature of any reputable type. It is not easy, in the pages of the Autobiography, to detect in Goethe an early leader of the Sturm und Drang; but it is easy enough to detect this in other sources. Here is a glimpse, in a letter from Mayer of Lindau (one of the Strasburg set) to Salz- mann, worth chapters of the Autobiography on such a point. ' 0 Cory don, Cory don qua te dementia cepit ! According to the chain in which our ideas are linked together, Corydon and dementia put me in mind of the extravagant Goethe. He is still at Frankfurt, is he not?' That such a youth, whose wildness made friends nickname him the 'bear' and the ' wolf, could have been wholly pleasing to his steady, formal father, is not to be expected. Yet the worthy sire was not a little proud of his son's attainments. The verses, essays, notes, and drawings which had accumulated during the residence in Strasburg were very gratifying to him. He began to arrange them with scrupulous neatness, hoping to see them shortly pub- lished. But the poet had a virtue, perhaps of all virtues the rarest in youthful writers, — a reluctance to appear in print. Seeing, as we daily see, the feverish alacrity with which men accede to that extremely imaginary request, ' request of friends ', and dauntlessly rush into print, — seeing the obstinacy with which they cling to all they have written, and insist on what they have written being printed — Goethe's reluctance demands an explanation. And, if I I may interpret according to my own experience, the explanation is, I that his delight in composition was rather the pure delight of \ intellectual activity, than a delight in the result : delight, not in /I the -work, but in the working. Thus, no sooner had he finished a /poem than his interest in it began to fade ; and he passed on to 6 another. Thus it was that he left so many works fragments, his interest having been exhausted before the whole was completed. He had a small circle of literary friends to whom he communi- cated his productions, and this was publication enough for him. CHAP. l] Dr. Goethe's Return 99 We shall see him hereafter, in Weimar, writing solely for a circle of friends, and troubling himself scarcely at all about a public. It was necessary for him to occupy himself with some work which should absorb him, as Gotz did at this time, for only in work could he forget the pain, almost remorse, which followed his renunciation of Frederika. If at Strasburg he had felt that an end was approaching to this sweet romance, at Frankfurt, among family connections, and with new prospects widening before him, he felt it still more. He wrote to her. Unhappily that letter is not preserved. It would have made clear much that is now con- jectural. ' Frederika's answer ', he says, ' to the letter in which I had bidden her adieu, tore my heart. I now, for the first time, became aware of her bereavement, and saw no possibility of alle- viating it. She was ever in my thoughts ; I felt that she was wanting to me ; and, worst of all, I could not forgive myself ! Gretchen had been taken from me ; Annchen had left me ; but now, for the first time, I was guilty ; I had wounded, to its very depths, one of the most beautiful and tender of hearts. And that period of gloomy repentance, bereft of the love which had so invigorated me, was agonizing, insupportable. But man will live ; and hence I took a sincere interest in others, seeking to disen- tangle their embarrassments, and to unite those about to part, that they might not feel what I felt. Hence I got the name of the " Confidant ", and also/on account of my wanderings, I was named the "Wanderer". Under the broad open sky, on the heights or in the valleys, in the fields and through the woods, my mind regained some of its calmness. I almost lived on the road, wandering between the mountains and the plains. Often I went, alone or in company, right through my native city as though I were a stranger in it, dining at one of the great inns in the High Street, and after dinner pursuing my way. I turned more than ever to the open world and to Nature; therg_alpnej_found comfort. During my walks I sang to myself strange hymns and dithyrambs. One of these, the Wanderer's Sturmlied, still remains. I remember sing- ing it aloud in an impa55lorie